Airline to start city ops with eye on Cooch Behar market

Kolkata: A new airline is set to fly into Kolkata next month. After lockdown, FlyBig will be the second airline to start operations in the city. International airline Fly Dubai had started services between Dubai and Kolkata in November 2020.
FlyBig, a regional airline with its hub in Indore, plans to connect Kolkata with Rupsi in Assam’s Kokrajhar and Guwahati from April 1. The airline will also connect Dibrugarh and Tezpur in Guwahati, Pasighat and Tezu in Arunachal Pradesh, Aizawl in Mizoram, Shillong in Meghalaya and Agartala in Tripura. Sources in the airline said the flight to Rupsi will tap into the Cooch Behar market. Residents of Cooch Behar town now have to travel five-six hours to take a flight to Kolkata from Bagdogra. The travel time will reduce substantially as Rupsi is an hour-and-a-half’s drive from Cooch Behar town.
Though Cooch Behar has an airport, the runway isn’t long enough to allow operation of regional airlines. Only small planes with capacity of less than 20 passengers can operate from there, something that some non-scheduled operators, like North-East Airlines, had proposed. But commercial flights were never operated as the sector was unviable.