Aviation Minister inaugurates direct flight between Delhi, Deoghar

New Delhi, July 31

Civil Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia on Saturday virtually inaugurated the direct Indigo flight between Delhi and Deoghar.

Indigo will be deploying its A-320 Neo, a 180-seater twin turbofan engine passenger aircraft and is primarily used on domestic routes.

With this new flight launch, the total number of daily departures from Deoghar will be 11.

BJP parliamentarian Rajiv Pratap Rudy will be captain of the inaugural flight.

Speaking on the occasion, Scindia said: "Baba Baidya Nath Dham in Deoghar is an international religious heritage, and it gives me immense pleasure to state that my ministry has helped millions of pilgrims to visit Deoghar. Along with the country's hard economic power, we need to dovetail the country's soft power too. That's the reason why major aviation infrastructure is created at places such as Ayodhya International Airport, Kushinagar International Airport and now Deoghar Airport."

The minister further said: "We constructed Deoghar Airport which is spread over 655 acres at a cost of Rs 400 crore, making it the second airport in Jharkhand after Ranchi. We are also working on 3 more airports in Jharkhand -- Bokaro, Jamshedpur and Dumka taking the total number of airports in Jharkhand to 5.

"We have announced 14 new routes connecting Jharkhand out of which 2 routes - Deoghar - Kolkata and Delhi - Deoghar have been started and in the coming days, we will connect Deoghar with Ranchi and Patna. Along with this, we will connect Dumka with Ranchi and Kolkata. Bokaro airport, once completed, will be connected with Patna and Kolkata."

The minister added: "425 routes and 68 airports, heliports, water dromes have been operationalised under the UDAN scheme and more than 1 crore people, mostly first-time flyers, have benefitted from it. Over 1 lakh 90 thousand flights have flown under this scheme. The Ministry of Civil Aviation has constructed 66 airports in the last 8 years which stood at 74 airports in the year 2014. We are planning to construct 220 new airports which includes Water Dromes and Heliports in the next 5 years."