A view of the flooded airport at Kochi on Thursday.

NEW DELHI: Living up to its image of always being at the forefront during natural calamities or rescue operations, Air India is trying to find a way to fly in and out of Kochi where the severely flooded civil airport is closed till August 26.

AI’s subsidiary Alliance Air (AA) will on Saturday operate a “proving flight” on an ATR (turboprop) to Kochi’s naval base. If found safe, AA plans to mount more flights to Kochi’s defence airbase and also pave the way for other airlines with turboprops like IndiGo, Jet and SpiceJet to do so.

“Our proving flight will leave from Bangalore for Kochi naval base on Saturday morning. The aircraft will have a team of DGCA and our flight safety officials. We have a regular Bangalore-Kochi (Cochin International Airport Ltd, CIAL) flight that has been suspended. If the proving flight to Kochi naval base goes as planned, we will start Bangalore-Kochi flight from Sunday. As of now we are planning double daily flights to Kochi (naval base) and if needed we can add more flights. Other airlines with ATRs can also do so,” AA CEO CS Subbiah said. According to parent AI’s website, AA has 15 ATRs.

The Kochi airport is closed till August 26 afternoon due to severe flooding. While airlines have added flights to nearby Calicut and Thiruvananthapuram, passengers are complaining of overcharging on flights to these two cities. “Travel portal ixigo CEO and co-founder Aloke Bajpai said: “Owing to the floods in Kerala and the subsequent shut down of Kochi airport, we have witnessed a spike of about 48% in flight fares for Kerala. Maximum spike has been witnessed in flights from Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Mumbai and Pune to Thiruvananthapuram.”

An aviation ministry spokesman said: “Airlines have been requested to cap the maximum fare around Rs 10,000 on longer routes and around 8000 on shorter routes to/from Kerala and nearby airports. DGCA is constantly monitoring airfares on 32 direct routes operating to and from Trivandrum, Calicut, Coimbatore and Mangalore. Spike in airfare on few routes have been observed. Concerned airlines have been advised to cap the airfare on these flights.”

Air Passengers Association of India founder D Sudhakara Reddy has issued an ‘appeal’ to all airlines flying to Kerala to treat the state’s flooding as a humanitarian issue. “We ask all airlines to help every stranded member of a family to reach his/her destination at the lowest cost possible and not charge exorbitant fares.”

An aviation ministry spokesman said out of 71 arrivals and 74 departures of scheduled domestic airlines to/from Cochin, 23 arrivals and 24 departures have been rescheduled and another 19 arrivals and departures have been mounted to and from Trivandrum, Calicut and Coimbatore airports. Nine foreign carriers operating to Cochin have also rescheduled their flights to and from Trivandrum.

Air India says it has rescheduled some Kochi flights scheduled for Saturday, Sunday and Monday and will operate them from Thiruvananthapuram. These include AI 933 to Dubai; AI 047 and 511 to Delhi; AI 682 to Mumbai and AI 510 to Chennai.

SpiceJet said it will operate 76 additional flights for Kerala. This will include new and additional direct flights on the routes like Chennai-Thiruvanathapuram, Bengaluru-Kozhikode, Male-Thiruvananthapuram, Bengaluru-Thiruvananthapuram, Kozhikode-Chennai, and Dubai-Kozhikode. SpiceJet will be deploying a mix of both Boeing 737 and Q400 on these routes.

