Agartala, Oct 26 (IANS) Direct flight services connecting Agartala with Bagdogra in West Bengal will begin on Sunday evening, while air connectivity between Agartala and Silchar in southern Assam will resume on October 28 after nearly three decades, officials said.

Assistant General Manager of the Airports Authority of India (AAI), Agartala, S. Haokip Jempu, said that Air India Express will commence its Agartala–Bagdogra service on Sunday evening from the Maharaja Bir Bikram (MBB) Airport in Agartala.

Bagdogra Airport, located in Siliguri in North Bengal, is about 68 km from the popular tourist destination Darjeeling. He said that flight services between Agartala and Silchar will begin from October 28, operating twice a week, every Tuesday and Friday.

The route will be operated by IndiGo, marking the resumption of air services between the two Northeastern cities after almost 30 years.

With these additions, Agartala will now have direct air connectivity with 10 destinations across the country. At present, the Tripura capital is connected by air to Kolkata, Delhi, Imphal, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Dibrugarh, Guwahati, and Chennai.

According to AAI officials, Agartala’s MBB Airport ranks 10th in the country in terms of the customer satisfaction index among all airports in India.

Currently, 13 to 16 flights operate daily, handling around 4,000 to 5,000 passengers per day.

The newly-constructed terminal building at the MBB Airport, with a built-up area of 30,000 sq. metres, has been designed to handle both domestic and international passengers simultaneously during peak hours.

Agartala’s MBB Airport is the second busiest airport in the Northeast, after the Lokpriya Gopinath Bordoloi International (LGBI) Airport in Guwahati. There are a total of 23 airports in the northeastern region, of which 17 are operational. These include Guwahati, Silchar, Dibrugarh, Jorhat, Tezpur, Lilabari and Rupsi (Assam); Tezu, Pasighat, Ziro and Donyi Polo Airport (Arunachal Pradesh); Agartala (Tripura); Imphal (Manipur); Shillong (Meghalaya); Dimapur (Nagaland); Lengpui (Mizoram); and Pakyong (Sikkim).

Meanwhile, Tripura Transport and Tourism Minister Sushanta Chowdhury earlier said that the state government had decided to extend financial support for the proposed Agartala–Chittagong (Bangladesh) air service to be operated by SpiceJet.

He said the government had allocated Rs 15 crore to the AAI for the project and already paid Rs 3.85 crore as a three-month advance in December 2022, besides deploying 25 police personnel to assist the Bureau of Immigration under the Ministry of Home Affairs.

However, due to political unrest in Bangladesh since August last year, the launch of flight services between Agartala and Chittagong has been delayed.

According to historian and writer Pannalal Roy, the land for Agartala, Kailashahar, and several other (now defunct) airports in Tripura was donated by the state’s erstwhile royal family.

“During the Second World War, King Bir Bikram supported the Allied powers, especially Great Britain, and deployed a contingent of the Tripura Army to assist them. During that time, airports at Agartala, Kailashahar, and other places were built to facilitate the Allied forces,” Roy, who has authored several books on Tripura’s royal history, told IANS.

He added that in 1943, Japanese fighter planes twice bombarded the Agartala airport.

–IANS

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