Ludhiana to be on Air Map again after 3 years

Ludhiana, September 3, 2023: Finally, sincere efforts made by MP (Rajya Sabha) Sanjeev Arora from Ludhiana Sanjeev have shown positive results and resumption of flights to Ludhiana's Sahnewal airport under Udan Scheme is about to take place.

According to Arora, the opening flight will take off from the Hindon Domestic Airport at 9:25 am on September 6 and arrive at the Sahnewal Domestic Airport at 10:50 am. The return flight will depart from Sahnewal at 11:10 am to reach Hindon at 12:25 pm. One-way fare will be Rs.3,148 for this flight. He said this is a reasonable fare for a flight from Delhi-Ludhiana.

Arora will fly from Hindon to Ludhiana on inaugural flight. In-fact, Union Minister of State for Civil Aviation Gen VK Singh (retd) will be the chief guest at the inaugural flight from Hindon to Sahnewal and Arora will be the Guest of Honour. On this achievement, Arora said, “This is a big achievement for Ludhiana and whole of Punjab as I have been struggling to get the flights resumed” He added that this will be really a great moment for him to fly in the inaugural flight. 

It was on September 1, 2017 when the Ludhiana-Delhi-Ludhiana flight was awarded to Alliance Air in the first round of bidding, under the Udan route. However, this flight was discontinued on August 31, 2020, after completion of three-year tenure. Since then, there was no domestic flight from Ludhiana following which Arora was making all out efforts for resumption of this flight. He had taken up this matter at various platforms. 

On August 16 this year, Arora had written to the Rajiv Bansal Secretary, MoCA, with regard to resumption of flights to Sahnewal airport under Udan Scheme. He had written that as a Member of Parliament from Punjab and belonging to Ludhiana, he would like to express his deep concern about the delay in the resumption of flights to Sahnewal airport. It was communicated by the Minister vide his letter dated January 27, 2023 to him that in the summer schedule the flight under Udan scheme will start from Hindon to Sahnewal. Since then, he and his office has been following up with Big Charter as well as the Ministry without any concrete response. He had further written that there is a major connectivity issue for the people of Ludhiana and the surrounding areas. The Sahnewal airport is the only airport in the region that can handle commercial flights, and its closure has caused a great deal of inconvenience to passengers. Thus, seeking the secretary’s intervention Arora had demanded to take steps to expedite the resumption of flights to Sahnewal airport.

Expressing his pleasure over the latest development, Arora said now the route has been awarded to Big Charters with a 19-seater aircraft under Udan 4.2 bidding round under the summer schedule. He stated that a private carrier, Big Charter Private Limited’s Fly Big, will be operating the flight through a 19-seater DHC-400 twin engine new aircraft, made in Canada. He said around 2,000 such planes are flying across the globe. Arora thanked the Minister of Civil Aviation (MoCA) Jyotiraditya M Scindia, the MoCA Secretary and Big Charter Pvt Ltd Managing Director Sanjay Mandavia for acceding to his request of resuming the flight. The flight will take 1 hour 15 minutes.

Arora said the flight would operate five days a week, from Monday to Friday. However, the flight would operate daily, all seven days from October-end. He revealed that from 10th September, 2023 onwards, Hindon will be connected to Bathinda also. Arora said, “This is just the beginning as far as air connectivity of Punjab is concerned because the Halwara International Airport is also nearing completion. The work of construction of this airport is going on speedily as this is a dream project of Punjab CM Bhagwant Mann and flights will also start from this airport after a few months.” He added business community and public at large will be benefitted greatly after start of the Halwara Airport.