*44 weekly departures to Dubai
*Frequent connectivity to The Middle East, London, Kuala Lumpu & Bangkok
* 668 weekly domestic operations
As the country plans to resume scheduled commercial international flights on 27th March, Cochin International Airport Ltd(CIAL), India's third busiest airport in international sector is set to see more traffic in both international and domestic destinations. As per the summer schedule which will come into effect on 27th Match and will be operational till 29th October, CIAL will have 1190 weekly air traffic movements as against 848 during the ongoing winter schedule.
CIAL's summer schedule will see 20 airlines operating to destinations abroad among which 16 are International carriers operating 261 weekly departures. Indigo tops the list with 42 weekly departures to International destinations whereas Air India express will have 38 departure operations weekly.Air India express -38,Air Asia Berhad -21,Ethihad -21, Emirates -14, Oman Air -14,Qatar Air -14,Saudi Arabian -14, Kuwait air -8, Thai Air – 4, Srilankan -10, Gulf Air -7, Singapore Airlines-7, Spicejet-6Fly Dubai -3 other prominent carriers operating frequent weekly services.There will be 44 weekly departures to Dubai Alone. Whereas Abu Dhabi comes second with 42 operations from Kochi.
Air India will continue their three weekly operations to London and Thai Air Asia will resume its operations from Kochi in June, with 4 weekly direct flights to Bangkok. After a hiatus of 2 years Air Asia Berhad also having daily services to Kuala Lumpur from March itself.
CIAL schedules 668 domestic operations for the summer season offering connectivity with 13 cities in the country which includes 63 weekly flights to Delhi, 55 to Mumbai, 39 to Hyderabad, 49 to Chennai, 79 to Bangalore and 7 to Kolkata. There will be daily flight to Pune, TVM, Mysore, Kannur, Hubli and Agati, Ahmedabad.
CIAL managing director S Suhas IAS said that the zealous effort taken by the company to smoothen the traffic during the pandemic period has instilled a sense of safety among International Airlines. Hon’ble Chairman Pinarayi Vijayan and the Board of directors have taken effort to increase the connectivity from Kochi. We believe this will give a fillip to our project to make Kochi an air traffic hub in South India, Suhas added.
CIAL had been handling 10 million passengers a year during the pre-pandemic era implemented a slew of measures to increase the traffic during the period. CIAL handled a total of 43,06,661 passengers during the whole year of 2021. Of that, 18,69,690 were international passengers. CIAL’s passenger volume has almost increased by a million in 2021 when compared to that of 2020 .