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Title : Need to restore the Air India flights withdrawn from Indo-Gulf sector and to extend Delhi-Bangaluru flight upto Calicut in Kerala.
SHRI M.K. RAGHAVAN (KOZHIKODE): Air India is operating flights from Kozhikode (Calicut) since the opening of the Airport. The Indo-Gulf sector is one of the largest profitable sectors. However, since the last two years, several operations have been cancelled from here apart from last moment cancellations of other flights due to various in house reasons. The prominent among them are IC-997/998 Calicut-Doha-Bahrain-Calicut and IC-993/994 Chennai-Calicut-Kuwait-Calicut-Chennai. Similarly, the flight Nos. IC-537/538 Calicut-Dubai-Calicut and IC-597/598 Calicut-Sharjah-Calicut are expected to be withdrawn shortly. Incidentally, the space left by Air India has been taken over by private operators as well as by the Gulf operators who are operating with full capacity and profitably. Similarly, the domestic flight Nos. IC-925/926 Chennai-Calicut-Chennai and CD-993/994 Delhi-Calicut-Mangalore-Delhi which were operating with full capacity flights have been withdrawn.
In addition to this, there is no flight to Calicut from Delhi in the evening. A flight presently operating to Bangalore in the evening should be extended to Calicut.
Several requests for restoration of these flights have been made and assurances were given. However, none of these flights have been restored so far. It is requested that some measures should be taken for immediate restoration of these flights and also for the proposed extension of flight from Bangalore.