Chandigarh, June 23: Giving those travelling by air from Chandigarh some relief, come July 1 Sunday operations will resume at Chandigarh International Airport with six flights scheduled to take off. While three will fly on the Delhi route, one each is for Bengaluru, Mumbai and Hyderabad.
Flight operations on Sundays were suspended in October last year due to runway upgrade. With basic recarpeting work completed last month, the operations are now being resumed.
Airport spokesperson Deepesh Joshi said, initially, the airport will remain open between 1pm and 6:30 pm on Sundays. The duration will be increased as the runway expansion work moves towards completion. The airport remains open from 7am to 6:30 pm on the remaining days and around 30 flights operate daily.
However, as of now travelling on Sundays will be expensive because of the limited number of seats. Tickets for July 1 are already available for up to double the price on weekdays.
For instance, one-way tariff on the Chandigarh-Delhi route is between Rs 1,500 and Rs 2,000. However, the July 1 ticket is available for Rs 3,500, followed by Rs 3,699 on July 8 and 3,594 on July 15.
Meanwhile, the July 1 tariff of the lone Mumbai flight is ₹9,100 as compared to the normal fare between Rs 3,500 and Rs 4,500.
Travelling to Bengaluru and Hyderabad on Sundays is also quite expensive. As compared to the normal fare between Rs 4,500 and Rs 5,000, the July 1 flight ticket is available for around Rs 10,000, though the price goes down to around Rs 7,000 on the following two Sundays. The Hyderabad flight ticket is also priced at Rs 8,800 on July 1, more than double the usual fare of Rs 3,500.
A senior official of a private airline said the prices on Sunday will not stabilise till more flights are scheduled to strike a balance between the demand and supply. Meanwhile, airport officials are hopeful of more airlines resuming their Sunday operations as the timings are further relaxed.
