Mangalore, August 7: Mangalore Airport is among four others to which the Air India Express (AIE) would operate additional international flights during the upcoming festival season.
The airline decided to introduce over 50 flights in the Middle East sector to meet the rush of passengers during Eid-ul-Fitr and Onam. Most services -to Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Sharjah, Doha and Dammam- would be from Thiruvananthapuram, Kozhikode and Kochi besides Mangalore. An AIE official said some flights would operate from Chennai and Mumbai.
The AIE would operate flights in the Kozhikode-Dubai-Kozhikode route on August 18 and 25, while another Mangalore- Kozhikode-Dubai-Mangalore flight would fly on September 7.
Additional Kochi-Dubai-Kochi flights would operate on August 8, 15, 18, and September 9. Services in the Thiruvananthapuram-Dubai sector would be on August 8, 13, 15 and September 8 and 14.
Special Kozhikode-Doha-Kozhikode flights would operate on August 25 and September 2 and 9. There would be an additional flight each in Kochi-Abu Dhabi-Kochi route on August 26; in Thiruvanathapuram-Abu Dhabi-Thiruvanathapuram route on August 30 and one in Kozhikode-Abu Dhabi-Kozhikode route on August 15.
An additional Kozhikode-Kochi-Kuwait-Kochi-Kozhikode flight would operate on September 5, the airline said.
The AIE have also decided to operate additional Mumbai-Dammam-Mumbai flights on all Tuesdays and Fridays from August 21 to September 14.
This would have connection flights from Kochi, Thiruvananthapuram and Kozhikode. Chennai-Dubai-Chennai flights has started operating from August 2. The flights would operate on all Thursdays till September 13, AIE said.
Normal flights from September
Air India Express expects to resume normal service by September-end, while Air India is likely to operate normally by this month-end.
AIE has been cancelling several flights from Mangalore and from Kerala airports owing to employees' strike. Air India has been cancelling 20% of its services across the country.
“We are re-rostering the 400-odd pilots rejoining duty in phases. We have to make them undergo a series of tests before they are allowed to operate flights independently, as they were off-roster for more than 30 days,” an Air India official said.
The official said that the Kozhikode-Riyadh flight would resume by August 9. He said the Kochi-Riyadh flight was operating normally from August 1.
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