Kannur International Airport. | Photo Credit: ANI

Kerala: The Kannur International Airport commenced operations on Sunday with an Air India Express flight taking off to Abu Dhabi at 10 am. Earlier today, the airport was inaugurated by Union Aviation Minister Suresh Prabhu and Kerala CM Pinarayi Vijayan.

The flight had with 180 passengers and all the passengers overboard received a gift from KIAL. This is the fourth international airport in the state, the rest are in Thiruvananthapuram, Kochi and Kozhikode reported ANI.

International flights will fly to the UAE, Oman, Qatar, while on domestic routes Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Mumbai among others will operate.

According to official inputs, the KIAL will serve more than 1.5 million international passengers annually and is expected to give a boost to tourism in Kannur, Kasargode and Wayanad region.

It should be noted that a good chunk of people in the South Indian state work in Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries like UAE, Saudi Arabia and Qatar and lots of flyers depart from Kochi, Thiruvananthapuram and Kozhikode to these countries on a regular basis. During festivals like Onam, Vishu, Eid and Christmas heavy traffic on this route is quite common with high ticket prices.

Built on 2000 acres of land, the airport boasts of a massive 4,000-metre runway which is considered comfortable for take-off and landing of wide-bodied planes like Boeing 737 and Airbus A-380. Apart from Kannur, only New Delhi, Bengaluru and Hyderabad have 4000-meter runways.