PANAJI
The new Manohar International Airport at Mopa goes onstream on Thursday with a flight from Hyderabad operated by Indigo Airlines expected to land at 9 am.
A representative of GMR said, the ETA of Indigo Flight number 6E 6145 is 9 am on Thursday and a total of eleven more flights are lined up for landing at the new airport through the day.
The official said, at least four airlines, including IndiGo, Go First, Vistara and Akasa Air are currently setting up their counters at the airport terminal.
Meanwhile, the State government is struggling to ensure smooth commencement of operations of taxi services from the new airport with the imbroglio linked to the new State-owned taxi aggregator app and taxi counters there yet to be resolved.
The State-owned Kadamba Transport Corporation (KTC) has announced hourly e-bus journeys to-and-fro the Mopa airport from various cities and locations in the State at fixed predetermined tariffs to ensure arriving passengers are not left stranded with taxi services uncertain.
The greenfield international airport had been formally named ‘Manohar International Airport’ (MIA) when it was recently inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi who said the name was to honour Goa’s former chief minister the late Manohar Parrikar who was also the Union Defence Minister in his first five-year term.
On Wednesday, the Modi-led Union Cabinet gave its post-facto approval to the name.
Initially, domestic operations will begin at the airport and international flights are expected to begin there from March.
Being built at a total cost of Rs 2,870 crore, only the first phase of the airport with the capacity to cater to 4.4 million passengers a year is completed and commissioned.
The GMR group’s GMR Goa International Airport Limited (GGIAL) is the owner of the airport which has been developed on a Design, Build, Finance, Operate and Transfer (DBFOT) basis.
The concession deal between GGIAL and the Goa government is for 40 years and three more phases of the airport are expected to increase its capacity to 33 million passengers annually.
With operations at Mopa set to commence on Thursday the decades-old debate over the uncertain future of parallel civil operations at the existing Dabolim airport in South Goa is expected to return to Goa’s political discourse.
Politicians, hospitality industry captains and others are worried that the Navy-controlled airport at Dabolim will eventually shut down for civil operations although both the State and Central government officials have assured both will remain operational.
Sec 144 imposed at Mopa
PANAJI: Section 144 will be imposed from National Highway to Mopa Airport from Wednesday night to ensure that law and order situation is maintained in the vicinity of the airport which starts its commercial operations from Thursday.
“No one should try to pose any hurdles unnecessarily. There will be full tight security. We have to welcome passengers and tourists coming at Mopa,” said Chief Minister Pramod Sawant.
He warned of strict action against anyone trying to cause law and order issues. “Section 144 will be lifted only after ensuring that the situation becomes normal,” said the Chief Minister.
