Alliance Air to reduce Kullu-Delhi daily flights to four days a week

The sole government national regional flag carrier Alliance Air will reduce daily direct operations between Kullu and Delhi to four days in a week from October 27 to March 29. As per the winter schedule of the airline, the direct flights to Kullu through 48-seater ATR 42 aircraft will operate on Sundays, Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. The Kullu-Amritsar-Kullu flight will also be operational on these four days as earlier using the same aircraft coming from Delhi.

Meanwhile, the Kullu-Dehradun-Kullu flight will now become Dehradun-Kullu-Dehradun and will operate on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays through ATR-42 aircraft. The Jaipur-Kullu-Jaipur direct flight scheduled to commence from October 15 will also operate on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays via 70-seater ATR-72 aircraft. While flights going to Dehradun and Jaipur will further go to Delhi, but passengers from Kullu will not have the option to continue onwards journey to Delhi from Dehradun or Jaipur on the same flight from Kullu.

Even last year, the airlines had reduced operations to four days a week during December. An aviation expert Budhi Prakash Thakur said that the weather here during the month of December and January is generally not favourable for air operations but still the airlines used to carry out daily operations earlier. He said, “Even earlier sometimes the operations had been halted for 10 to 20 days in view of inclement weather during the winters. However, this time it seemed that airlines had reduced the frequency of air operations due to low demand during winters.”

Vinay, a tourism beneficiary of Manali, said that daily operations between Delhi and Kullu should continue in order to promote tourism. He said, “Festive season was going on and Christmas and New Year season was about to approach. The reduction in air operations will have an adverse impact on the tourism industry.” He added that now the tourist influx can be witnessed round the year and improving air connectivity will further boost the tourism industry of the area.

Kullu Travel Agents Association patron Bhupinder Thakur said that airfares would shoot up due to decrease in frequency of air operations. He said, “The government carrier should also consider public utility and not only economic viability.” He added that operations between Kullu and Chandigarh, halted since November 2023, should also be resumed under the Regional Connectivity Scheme (RCS), commonly known as UDAN (Ude desh ka aam naagrik).