From Thursday, Coimbatore airport will play host to another new service, this time by GoAir. GoAir’s Coimbatore-Mumbai daily direct service will begin on December 24. According to reports, the airline has allocated an Airbus 320neo on the route with a carrying capacity of 180 passengers. The GoAir flight G8 0331 will leave Mumbai at 12.40 pm and reach Coimbatore at 2.30 pm. On the return leg, flight G8 0332 will depart Coimbatore at 3 pm and arrive at Mumbai at 4.50 pm. The flight schedule has been planned in such a way as to enable quicker and more convenient connecting service to Coimbatore, a press statement said.
The tickets for the service are up for booking in all booking channels. The airline has introduced this route because it saw a stable demand between the two cities, according to the Chief Executive Officer of GoAir, Kaushik Khona.
Meanwhile, the Coimbatore airport is seeing expansion activities including seven new aprons being constructed to accommodate more aircrafts. The airport already has nine aprons. Aprons are spots to park an aircraft. The work on these new aprons is expected to be completed by March 2021, as per reports. Of the seven new aprons, five are built to accommodate narrow body aircrafts like the Airbus A320 while the other two are designed to accommodate smaller ATR aircrafts.
These new aprons will enable airlines to operate more base flights from the city. Base flights arrive at Coimbatore late in the night and depart early the next morning, thus requiring longer parking time within the airport. Since the state government is providing concession on Value Added Tax (VAT) on Aviation Turbine Fuel (ATF) for flights operating between 11 pm and 7 am, it is hoped that airlines will operate more services between these time slots.
At present, Coimbatore handles a few direct routes to cities like Chennai and Bengaluru and one international service to Sharjah.