Kolkata to have more frequent flights to Singapore

Kolkata will now have more frequent flights going to Singapore.Singapore’s primary civilian airport, Changi Airport, will have extensive flight services for three cities in India – Kolkata, Bengaluru and Chennai.

Meanwhile, Air India Express, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Air India, will resume two of its flights connecting Kolkata with Singapore and Dhaka from November 20, after a gap of over four years. The carrier will also increase frequency on the Singapore-Chennai sector from five times a week to daily.

Jet Airways will start a new daily Singapore-Bangalore service next month. The addition of these 13 weekly services will offer travellers 2,300 more weekly one-way seats.

A recent survey has revealed that about two-thirds of the capacity growth is on routes to China and India from Changi Airport, which is currently ranked the world’s best airport. So, with several airlines ramping up for the upcoming peak travel season, travellers from Kolkata can expect more flights to popular destinations in the region.

City-based travel agents and officials of the Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose International Airport (NSCBIA) are keeping their fingers crossed for the success of these new routes. As per a source in the NSCBIA, about 90 new flights a week, offering more than 8,000 weekly one-way seats from Singapore to 10 cities across Asia, will be added progressively from now until the end of the year.

Between January and September, traffic to and from Singapore and India increased by 4.2 per cent. According to the recent data released by the Ministry of Tourism, the percentage of foreign tourist arrival at NSCBIA was 4.43 per cent as of September 2016. As Kolkata is the gateway of Eastern and North-Eastern India, the Bengal government is going the whole hog in displaying the city as a favoured tourist destination for foreigners.

Recently, Kolkata was ranked among the 100 top destination cities this year. The ‘Global Destination Cities Index 2016’ published by a global e-Payment major ranked Kolkata at 62, well ahead of Pune. Overall, there are five Indian cities that have been featured in the top 100 list, where Mumbai was ranked at 27, Chennai at 30, Delhi at 48, Kolkata at 62 and finally Pune at 91.