The Andhra Pradesh government on Wednesday announced that the much-anticipated direct flight between Vijayawada and Singapore may not take off this week as IndiGo was yet to finalise its schedule.
Earlier this week, Principal secretary (infrastructure and investments) Ajay Jain in a press release said that the flights would commence operations on October 25 and said that the state government was fully geared up to promote the development of aviation infrastructure.
However, the state government has said that bookings would start soon but the actual flights may only begin in the first week of December as several formalities were also yet to be completed.
"Though the initial plan was to commence the service on October 25, the disagreement between the Department of Customs and the Airports Authority of India (AAI) on the expenditure and arrangement of infrastructure for setting up the customs operations led to delay in receipt of the regulatory approvals," media advisor to the government A. Chandra Sekhara Reddy said in a statement.
"We are yet to finalise the dates. We would keep you informed as and when we start these flight services," an IndiGo spokesperson told PTI.
Aiming to connect Vijayawada and the capital region in the world, the state government has offered viability gap funding to service providers to encourage more airlines to run international flights from the state.
It was in May last year, that the central government granted international status to the Vijayawada airport.
The decision to upgrade the status of Vijayawada airport, as per the provisions of the Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Act, 2014 was taken by the Union Cabinet, whose meeting was chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
"The proposal will add to improved connectivity to the state capital," the Union Cabinet said in a statement.
"It will provide wider choice of services at competitive costs to the air travellers and give a boost to domestic/international tourism and socio-economic development of Andhra Pradesh by bringing in international passengers and cargo traffic," the statement added.