Doubts arise over feasibility of Surat airport

It was a historical day for Surat. With the arrival of the inaugural Mumbai-Surat-Mumbai flight of Air Deccan, the city witnessed the commencement of air services.

But the happiness lasted only for a day as the flight was cancelled on Sunday.

Talking to Business Standard, John Kuruvilla, chief revenue officer, Air Deccan, said, "We had to cancel the Mumbai-Surat flight on Sunday, due to a technical snag. Even if we had tried to operate the flight, it would have been delayed by three or four hours, so we decided to cancel it. The flights will, however, operate as per schedule from Monday onwards."

Though air services have commenced from Surat, doubts persist over the feasibility of the flight.

Nanu Vanani, president, Surat Diamond Association, said: "Air services between Surat and Mumbai do not serve much purpose, and in my opinion the flight would not be viable for the time being. There is good rail connectivity between Mumbai and Surat. It takes four hours to travel between the two cities, which would pretty much be the same by flight, if one considers the time to reach the airport, the check-in time, the travel time and the time to complete the other formalities after landing."

Vanani, however, added, "Air services also have their advantage. If someone from Surat has to travel to another city, he could reach Mumbai in a flight and catch another flight at the airport itself, which would do away with the pain of travelling to the airport after reaching Mumbai."

Air Deccan officials are, however, very confident that the flight would be a success.

"We conducted a feasibility report before launching the air services. If the report would have been negative, we would never have started the flights. People had expressed similar opinions when we started flights on our sectors, but we proved everyone wrong. We are getting full traffic on all the routes we are operating on. We took the initiative and have achieved success," Kuruvilla said.