As part of its plan to develop civil aviation infrastructure in the state, the government has been holding meetings with the scheduled and unscheduled airlines, inviting them to enhance regional connectivity.
The non-availability of slots at city's Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport (CSIA) may prompt Air India to use Pune as its base to ramp up the regional connectivity in Maharashtra, linking regions like Nanded, Amravati, Nashik and Shirdi.
As part of its plan to develop civil aviation infrastructure in the state, the government has been holding meetings with the scheduled and unscheduled airlines, inviting them to enhance regional connectivity. The state government has even envisaged a blueprint for the same, which is along the lines of the one recently released by the Central government.
"We may connect these cities may be by using Pune as our base and connecting it once with Mumbai. There is a severe shortage of slots availability at CSIA," said Mukesh Bhatia, regional director (western region), Air India on the sidelines of an event to announce the launch flight to Newark from Ahmedabad via London, beginning August 15.
Mumbai's Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport (CSIA) has almost reached its saturation level. The state has 28 airports and airstrips, of which four are under construction or proposed, two are private and one is not in use.
Air India officials said that in order to negate the problem of lack of slots at major airports, the airline has plans to put more wide-bodied aircraft on these routes. "This will give us an opportunity to fly more passengers at one time. Apart from that, the passengers will get to avail the comforts of flying in a wide-bodied aircraft like Dreamliner on domestic routes" continued Bhatia.
When asked how soon the services would start from these cities, Bhatia added, "For Shirdi, we may start as soon as it is ready for operations and for other airports as and when the resources are available and other formalities get complete."
The airline officials said that they will also be seeking to connect a few of the airports by taking assistance from the state government in the form of viability gap funding (VGF).
Maharashtra, the third-largest urbanised state in the country, is also one of the most industrialised states, and contributes about 14.5% of India's total GDP.
At present, though Maharashtra has among the highest number of airports and airstrips in India, it has commercial operations from just four airports — Mumbai, Pune, Aurangabad and Nagpur, compared to 10 in the neighbouring state Gujarat.
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