IN A first, four new air routes connecting northeastern states with international destinations have been approved under the Centre’s flagship regional air connectivity scheme UDAN (Ude Desh ka Aam Nagrik). These will connect Assam to Thailand and Bangladesh, Manipur to Myanmar and Tripura to Bangladesh.
To be operational in a few weeks, airfares on these approved routes — Guwahati-Bangkok, Guwahati-Dhaka, Imphal-Mandalay and Agartala-Chittagong — under the UDAN scheme, will be subsidised. “These new routes have been in the pipeline since the concerned states made a demand,” Anil Kumar Gupta, Executive Director, Airports Authority of India (AAI) told The Indian Express, on the sidelines of the recently-held 11th International Tourism Mart in Shillong.
Reasonable airfares could boost tourism from neighbouring countries like Bangladesh, Myanmar and Bhutan in the northeastern…
