Guwahati, March 5: Bangkok Airways may well fly into the space vacated by Air-India in the Guwahati-Bangkok sector.
Assam industry minister Bhubaneswar Kalita disclosed that the airline has evinced interest in connecting the city with the Thai capital. ?A delegation from the airline will visit the state next month to carry out a feasibility study of the sector,? he said here last night.
The minister said he and a delegation of the Federation of Industries of North East Region (Finer) had held preliminary talks with officials of Bangkok Airways at Yangon last month.
Kalita and the Finer team had gone to the Myanmar capital to attend the Made in India Fair organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) from February 19 to 22.
Bangkok Airways flies to a total of 13 destinations in five countries, choosing those that are ?culturally rich and historically important? and not easily accessible to the everyday traveller, a member of the delegation quoted the airline officials as saying.
Air-India had introduced a flight between Guwahati and Bangkok on April 2002 but wound up operations a year later, after the national carrier reportedly incurred huge losses. But in the process, it also incurred the wrath of large sections of people of the Northeast.
The Guwahati-Bangkok flight was conceived to foster economic development of the Northeast, chiefly by promoting tourism and export of the region?s products, in particular perishable items of horticulture and floriculture.
Kalita said if introduced, Bangkok Airways would find the route more profitable than Air- India. ?The airliner will not have to think of going back empty as the people who come here from Thailand and other Southeast Asian countries would have to return home,? he added.
Air-India?s Bangkok flight ? the region?s only international air service ? was put off on April 23 last year in the wake of the outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in Southeast Asian countries.
Chief minister Tarun Gogoi had written to Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee seeking his intervention, saying the grounding of the flight by Air India has come as a ?rude shock? to the entire region which was looking at it as the ?beginning of a new era.?
He had also expressed his resentment over what he called Air India?s ?indifferent attitude? despite an assurance from the civil aviation ministry to continue the flight.