Mysore: An airport in search of flights
Air-traffic projection by Infosys has it that 800 of its employees would use air services every week to Chennai, Hyderabad and Bangalore. To be meaningful such projection ought to be able to give a break-down, city-wise, and also in terms of seat-occupancy on weekdays, and weekends.
It doesn’t require much study to say that much of the corporate employees traffic out of Mysore is on weekends. Check the Chennai Shadabthi bookings from Mysore on Friday/Saturday. Viewed in this perspective, Mysore could at best function a weekend airport, to start with.
Among other wild ideas that spring to mind:
1) Make Mysore a cargo hub for carrying vegetables, fruits, flowers,
and other perishables from districts and nearby Nilgiris to major
market centre. This would need deep-freeze storage facility.
2) Airlines operating from Mysore would do well to look at traffic to
tier-2 destinations such as Coimbatore, Madurai, Trichy, Bellary,
Mangalore, Tirupathi, Cochin.
3) The Airports Authority of India could consider developing a
shopping complex for air passengers and also local residents, in view
of the relative proximity of the airport to the city limits.
4) Doubling the railway track could attract air traffic from towns on railway route.
5) Early completion of the Mysore-Bangalore expressway would make
Mysore a credible alternative for air passengers in Bididi, Kengari and
other Bangalore suburbs on the Mysore-end.
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