Season's first charter arrives on Sunday from Russia

PANAJI

The tourist season is set to commence today, October 1, with the first charter from Russia arriving around 5:30 am at Dabolim International Airport. The Russian flag carrier - Aeroflot, handled by Concord Exotic Voyages (I) Pvt Ltd in Panaji, will be arriving from Moscow with around 250 passengers.

Details reveal that the scheduled departure of Aeroflot SU236 was at 7:10 pm (IST) on September 30 and after covering a distance of around eight hours, it will arrive at Dabolim airport.

With this being the maiden landing of the season, the flight will operate thrice a week from Moscow, and twice from Yekaterinburg city, while two charters will also fly from Kazakhstan in the coming days.

“We are excited to announce the first Russian charter arrival for the season from Moscow on Aeroflot SU236... These clients will be staying in hotels of all categories in the north and south of Goa,” Carolyn Rodricks, Contact Manager for the agency, said speaking to The Goan.

She further revealed that starting November they will also have one flight per week from Israel, while from December 2, a flight from Uzbekistan will start per week. “We will also get a lot of independent tourists from abroad as well as domestic this season. For this season, we will be handling approximately 850-1,000 clients on eight aircraft arriving each week,” she added.

UK-charter operators are also expecting a fruitful season as it has already announced an increase in the frequency of flights, starting this month-end. Goa is expecting the arrival of over one lakh charter passengers this season. President of the Travel and Tourism Association of Goa (TTAG) Nilesh Shah had recently told The Goan that as against 75,000 charter tourists last season, the projection for this year is to surpass the one lakh mark.

The eve of the tourist season, meanwhile, saw a huge rush as it marked the long weekend with October 2, Monday, being a national holiday. Several parts of Goa, most particularly the coastal belt, saw bumper-to-bumper traffic giving a tough time to the Traffic police while several locals were also stranded for a long time.