Jet Airways withdraw services from Silchar, Aizawl & Imphal

February 9: As a part of “route rationalisation” exercise and to cut down losses, Jet Airways has withdrawn its flights to and from the North Eastern places of Silchar, Imphal, Aizawl, Jorhat. The suspension of Jet Airways flights from these airports was effective from this week.

In entire North East region, Jet Airways will now fly only to Guwahati. Financial turbulence, especially over the past three quarters was cited by this airlines to be the prime cause of withdrawal of its services. This will pose a severe problem to the issue of connectivity for the remote places in North East region. Further, economic analysts are of the view that this will increase the price of tickets of other airlines flying in this route.

According to reports, the airlines began withdrawing operations for citing safety reasons apart from maintenance and viability. Before Jet Airways, several other private airliners have suspended operation from new and existing routes in the geographically challenged north-eastern region. This is seen as a sharp contrast to Central Government’s ambitious flagship regional connectivity scheme UDAN (Uday Desh Ka Aam Nagarik).

Leader of the Opposition in the Assam Legislative Assembly Debabrata Saikia in a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi urged him to take the initiative of bettering air connectivity among the northeastern States and the Northeast with the rest of India. Reminding Modi of launching UDAN in 2017, in which 12 new air routes were supposed to become operational in the Northeast, Saikia said the air connectivity in the region has still remained pathetic. The letter said only the Jorhat-Kolkata and Lilabari-Kolkata routes have remained operational and informed that Jet Airways would stop its Jorhat-Kolkata flight and Guwahati-Aizawl flights from February 10, which would make matters worse.