INDORE: Daily passenger footfall at Devi Ahilyabai Holkar Airport witnessed an increase in the ongoing festival season. In the last ten days, the airport has been witnessing a daily passenger footfall of over 6000.
As per officials, this increase is majorly due to the ongoing festivities. They pointed out that the airport, at present, is having to and fro movement of 30 flights on a daily basis, with a maximum of them operating on Indore-Delhi, Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Hyderabad, Bangalore, among other domestic routes. Flights on routes like Delhi and Mumbai are having almost full occupancy, they said.
“Daily passenger footfall has gone up to over 6000 as against a daily footfall of 3000 about a month ago. We are having over 80 per cent seat occupancy in most of the flights apparently due to the ongoing festival season,” airport’s officiating director Prabodh Chandra Sharma said. He said that relaxation for airports to operate in terms of flight movement has also brought relief for airlines which were finding it difficult to get slots due to a capping on daily flight movement. “We are now having operations of 30 flights on a daily basis on over 15 different routes and cities,” he said, adding that they expect a further increase in the footfall after the winter schedule comes into place from next month.
Travel agents are also of this view about the increase in travel during festival season and pointed out that tourism is an addition for the existing business and urgent air travel. “We have been getting enquiries and doing bookings for both personal and tourism travel as more and more people have started travelling in and out of Indore after decline in the number of cases of Covid-19,” state travel agents association’s chairman Hemendra Singh Jadon said.
