Direct flight to Mumbai from today

PATNA: The long wait of Patna fliers for a direct flight to Mumbai will come to an end on Friday. Private operator Kingfisher Red is commencing
its operations on Patna-Ranchi-Mumbai route from this day.

The flight, IT-571, will operate four days -- Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Sunday -- in a week.

It will take off from Patna at 2.05 pm and reach Ranchi at 2.55 pm. It will leave Ranchi at 3.30 pm and its scheduled time for reaching Mumbai is 5.35 pm, a Kingfisher official told TOI on Thursday.

The said flight would also provide direct connectivity between Mumbai and Patna and it would leave Mumbai at 11.10 am and reach Patna at 1.35 pm.

The airline has decided to press in Airbus-320 for this flight which would have 114 seats in the economy class and 20 seats in the executive class.

According to information provided by travel agencies, the airline is providing a Mumbai ticket with the starting price of about Rs 5,000. "The rates are, however, higher for the month of May, and the base rate is above Rs 7,000 for this month," said a travel agent.

He also said the response of travellers has been quite good and about 70 seats have been booked by Thursday evening for the Friday flight.

Incidentally, Patnaites have suffered due to the non-availability of a direct flight for Mumbai for long. They either had to go to Kolkata or Delhi to catch a connecting flight to the business capital of India.

Earlier, Jetlite used to operate on the Patna-Mumbai route but the flight was discontinued in November last year.

Source : Times of India