Buoyed by growing passenger traffic and aircraft movement at Coimbatore airport, SilkAir, a subsidiary of Singapore Airlines, plans to introduce its services here.
"Considering the huge outflow of passengers from this region to nations like China and Singapore for textile-related business activities, SilkAir may soon operate from the Coimbatore airport," Sanjay Cherian, passenger sales officer, Singapore Airlines, said here.
Although he remained non-committal on the timeline for the start of operations, sources say it is likely to happen by 2008.
During January-April 2006, tourist arrivals from India to Malaysia stood at 75,740, registering an 18% increase over arrivals during the corresponding period, a year ago. Of the 2.25 lakh Indian tourists who visited Malaysia in 2005, 37% were from non-metro cities, with the highest number of travellers being from Coimbatore., Joseph K Jose, marketing manager, Malaysia Tourism Promotion Board, said.
Passenger traffic to Southeast countries Asian like China and Singapore is also gaining momentum, especially in the post quota regime, i.e. after January 2005, for importing textile machinery and placing orders for spindles, he added.
“SilkAir did a feasibility study a few months ago on operating its flights out of Coimbatore airport. We got positive results but the plans were put on the back-burner due to infrastructural hurdles such as inadequate parking bays at the airport. Now that the upgradation work is going on, we are ready to start our operations from Coimbatore,” Cherian said.
At present, SilkAir flies to Cochin International Airport (Nedumbassery) and Thiruvananthapuram International Airport. It may either take the 'via' route (Cochin or Trivandrum - Coimbatore - Singapore) or operate directly from Coimbatore.
Courtesy : Business Standard
Monday, August 28, 2006
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2 comments:
I think 2008 is too late. Silk Air should start sevices end of by 2006
Warren Ezekiel
Melbourne
Silk air coimbatore - Unaffordable
Silk air service is great news for coimbatoreans and people around coimbatore. I am taking the inagural flight from singapore to coimbatore on the 28th of october. The return fare is 535 singapore dollars about 15,000 Rs.). However, when i tried to book tickets for my family from coimbatore to singapore ( one way). I was shocked to know that the one way fare cost Rs. 20,000 and a return somewhere around Rs. 28.000. This is crazy. I can very well travel by jet airways for half this fare from chennai. Here is the address of the Silk air office in coimbatore CJB Address/Tel/Fax nbrs
SilkAir (Singapore) Pte. Ltd.
195A, Tulsi Chambers
195, West T.V.Swamy Road
R.S.Puram
Coimbatore - 641 002
Tamil Nadu
India
Reservations 00 91 422 4370271
00 91 422 4370281
Sales 00 91 422 4370261
Fax 00 91 422 4370291
I tried to contact them a week back, but the office is just taking shape. Unless the price is brought down , I strongly feel that silkair service to singapore will be a failure.
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