Amritsar-Dubai flights launched

Air India Express, the low-cost subsidiary of Air India and the country's first international budget airline, introduced thrice-a-week service between Amritsar and Dubai today.

Rajya Sabha Member MS Gill flagged off the flight in the presence of Navjot Singh Sidhu, MP, at Raja Sansi International Airport.

This flight has taken the total number of flights from India to the United Arab Emirates and Oman to 39 per week. Of these 35 weekly flights are operated from Thiruvananthapuram, Kochi and Kozhikode.

The flight will be to Dubai from Delhi via Amritsar on Mondays, Thursdays and Saturdays. MS Gill said 40 per cent of the passengers at Indira Gandhi International Airport, Delhi, came from Punjab and in order to decongest it government must upgrade international airport here.

He urged Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to visit the airport here and to announce a grant of Rs 1,000 crore so that it could be upgraded. He said facilities here were far from satisfactory. Air India Express currently operates with a fleet of seven Boeing.

Meanwhile, a Russian private airline Transaero would introduce an Amritsar-Moscow-Toronto flight from October 4. Yacheslav I. Trubnikov, Russian Ambassador to India would flag off the inaugural flight.