There would be no take offs from Belagavi (Sambra) airport from March 1 as Spicejet has declared that it would starts its operations from Hubballi from the same date and Belagavi airport would be closed for runway expansion works.
SpiceJet had to stop its flight services from Hubballi airport in August 2014 as the runway expansion and strengthening work was taken up by the Airports Authority of India. Passengers were forced to travel to Belagavi to catch flights to Mumbai and Bengaluru.
Now commuters from Belagavi will be forced to travel to Hubballi to catch flights to Mumbai and Bengaluru.
No official word on when the runway expansion work will end has been officially announced yet.
DONT WORRY THERE ARE LOTS OF TRAINS AND BUSES AVAILABLE…JYADA HAWA ME MAT UDO.
Presently Belgaum airport handles ATR-72 aircraft, the seating capacity of ATR-72 is around 74 passengers. That means the airport is capable of handling 150 passengers at peak (75 passengers alighting & 75 passengers boarding). I guess we donot get to see 74 passengers alighting and another 74 boarding whenever an aircraft lands at Belgaum. I guess the nos. of passengers alighting & boarding is less than 20 each, this means the airport infrastructure is under utilized.
Now expansion plans are for handling A321 aircrafts, the seating capacity of A-321 is around 200 passengers. That means whenever a flight lands at Belgaum the airport would handle 400 passengers at peak (200 passengers alighting & 200 passengers boarding). Can we pratically get to see these numbers in Belgaum airport consistently on a daily basis? (200 passengers flying everyday consistently from Belgaum and another 200 comming to Belagum by flight everyday). This is quite serious, I guess this may not be possible in the next 10 years also. By expanding the airport and equipping it to handle A-321 aircrafts the airport would be “future ready” or rather “far future ready”. By considering the present load factor at Belgaum the operating charges per passenger would be very high with the improvised airport, can this be sustained on a long term – may be not, apparently this may turn out to be infeasible and may be forced to shut down the services. Whatever services of ATR-72 we have at the moment that also will go away. So folks this is a serious issue.
Places like jalgaon ,nagpur nashik in maharastra too are well equipped airports that diesnt mean so many passengers travel everyday .
This would boost tier 2 /3 cities in aviation indusrty,where long distant flights would land for refueling. And there would be subisdied fuel surcharge for such cities as well
This would inturn make some corporates to set up industries.Would be a opportunity.Be a opptimist !
Commercial flights do not operate at Jalgaon and Nasik. Flights could not operating because of so many reasons and the obvious ones due to passenger load factor. Whats the use of well equipped airports when flights dont operate?
You modernise an airport to accomodate Boeings & Airbuses but the passenger load factor is not good even for ATR flights; in such situations do you think airlines would deploy Boeings & Airbuses on Belgaum routes. First of all the passenger load factor at Belgaum should outgrow for ATR. 150 passengers at peak (75 alighting & 75 boarding consistently on a daily basis), if not 150 consider load factor of 80% it is 120 passengers (60 alighting & 60 boarding). Is this figure possible in the next 10 years? To be realistic its not possible however optimistic you may be.
Passenger load factor, or load factor, measures the capacity utilization of public transport services like airlines, passenger railways, and intercity bus services. It is generally used to assess how efficiently a transport provider “fills seats” and generates fare revenue.
According to the International Air Transport Association, the worldwide load factor for the passenger airline industry during 2013 was 79.5%.
Airlines cannot make good revenues if load factor is low hence affects the economics and apparently they are forced to cancel the infeasible routes due to non-sustainability.
You are talking about refuelling long haul flights, do you think the domestic routes are so long necessiating refuelling, this is not required at all.
You are talking about subsided fuel surcharges, what is the connection with Boeing/Airbus landing??
The ideal case is to modernise the existing facilities suitable for ATR no need to expand for Boeings/Airbuses, we will not be seeing any Boeing/Airbus landing in Belgaum, hence it is not required.
Please do your home-work with facts, figures and stastics to see the economic feasibility.
Whatever is available now its good (ATR landing) if expansion is done we may loose whatever the present facility is available. This is a serious issue.
Flight prices should come down that can happen with the less fuel charges and landing charges. The other side, public should use the flights to max. The first AC charge from BGM to BLORE is around 2200 and with the same amount we should be able to fly to Bangalore. I think there is atleast 50% occupancy in 1st AC in most of the trains. People should utilize the flight now and then inorder to make this available when they really require, so the income of the people should also increase.
Another concept is we can have a single flight connecting many places, like Belgaum and Hubli can made a single destination for Bangalore spice jet and Belguam and Kolhapur can be made for Mumbai flight. This way we can cater for two cities and the occupancy rate will increase. We can have a flight from Hubli, Pune connecting some other place like kolkota or HYD from there.
Also being the high parking charges, these smaller airports should able to provide the parking place of these bigger flights at very charges and also we should have some hangers at these airports so that atleast a few of the smaller flights will be parked over night.