Daijiworld Media Network - Kuwait
Kuwait, Feb 6: There is a ray of hope for the NRI’s of Karnataka who are making relentless efforts through the United Associations of Karnataka in Kuwait to have a direct flight to Mangalore and Bangalore from Kuwait. The commencement of direct flights from Dubai and soon-to-start flights from Abu Dhabi / Muscat has given a clear indication that start of Air India express flights from Kuwait to Mangalore is not far away.
The UAKK office-bearers in their continuous efforts to keep the pressure on, met India's minister for external affairs E Ahmed during his recent visit to Kuwait and submitted a memorandum to expedite the commencement of direct flights by Air India Express to Mangalore and Bangalore. The UAKK members also explained the efforts made by the community and appeals submitted to all officials concerned including to the civil aviation minister Praful Patel and to the prime minister's office.
Ahmed informed the members that he was well aware of this issue and assured that as soon as Air India Express resolved the aircraft crunch, flights would soon start from Kuwait to Mangalore. He requested the community leaders to be patient as it was just a matter of time. He was surprised to hear that there was still no direct flight from Kuwait to Bangalore.
UAKK office-bearers submitting memorandum to E. Ahmed
The memorandum was also copied to Sri Tulsidas, Chairman of Air India, Sri P.P. Singh CEO of Air India and Rishikanth Singh, Country Manager for Kuwait and Cyprus Air India, Kuwait.
On receiving the copy of the memorandum, Rishikanth Sigh, Air India country manager for Cyprus and Kuwait, explained his own efforts in impressing upon the Aviation and Air India officials to start direct flights to Mangalore and showed copies of the related correspondence to the visiting office-bearers of UAKK.
He said that the commercial viability of Kuwait/Mangalore/Bangalore sector is well known to Air India for some time but somehow the flights could not materialize due to priorities given to other sectors. He did not elaborate further. He confidently said as soon as aircraft are available, Kuwait Mangalore flight will start immediately. On pressurizing for a probable time frame he said that flights most likely tol start from May / June 2007.
Rishikant Singh receiving memorandum from UAKK office-bearers
UAKK also got assurances from the officials of Indian airline that there is every possibility of start of flights to Mangalore via Sharjah in the month of September / October later this year. It need to be noted that the local low budget Airline Jazeera Airlines had shown its willingness to start flights to Mangalore but is waiting for clearance from Indian civil aviation ministry.
The NRIs from Kuwait are hoping that their dreams of flying directly to Mangalore would come true before the start of the summer holidays and the nightmare of flying via Bombay be avoided once and for all.
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