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Its official now. The city airport would experience the first international flight operation from July 10 after a long wait.
"In view of the hub and spoke flight operation at Biju Patnaik International Airport terminal T2 from July 10, 2015 Air India flight nos AI 877 and AI 874 will operate as AI077 and AI078 respectively", Air India Bhubaneswar Station Manager, TR Ray said in a statement.
The AI077 flight will arrive at Bhubaneswar at 0905 hours while the international flight AI078 will take off at 14:00 hours daily.
"All custom and immigration formalities will be done at Bhubaneswar. The passengers can fly to their destinations from Delhi. Air India has code sharing with the star alliances connecting 126 countries except Germany," said Sharad Kumar, director of Biju Patnaik International Airport. As part of popularising the Nabakalebar festival and facilitating international travellers, it has been decided to start operation of international flights from Biju Patnaik airport.
Bhubaneswar airport belongs to Airport Authority of India and is suitable for operation of Code 'D' aircraft of type B-767-400. The airport is also equipped with facilities for night operation, runway 14/32 of dimension 2,743m X 45m, apron to park six aircrafts and navigational aids.
For normal international flights, the city has a runway length of 9,000 feet. The requisite facilities of customs, immigration, health services and animal and plant quarantine at the airport have also been completed.
It may be noted that though the status of the city airport was elevated in 2013, international flight operations had not started yet. To attract global carriers, the Odisha government had slashed value added tax (VAT) on aviation turbine fuel (ATF) to zero from five per cent. The decision to waive off the tax was taken at meeting of state cabinet recently.
