Prayagraj: The Prayagraj airport is currently operating an average of about 40 non-scheduled charters and private jets daily for the rich and famous, with figures touching 70 such flights on weekends, thanks to spiking in rush to the Maha Kumbh.
Those figures are over and above the average 148 scheduled commercial passenger aircraft, which is more than seven times the number during non-Kumbh periods, operating from the airstrip every day setting record passenger movement through the airport that keeps breaking repeatedly since the beginning of the Maha Kumbh, a senior Airports Authority of India official said.
The latest such record was posted on February 21 when 24,512 passengers arrived at and departed from the airport by 236 flights on a single day, the official said.
During normal times, the airport operates some 20 scheduled flights in and out, carrying less than a thousand passengers, he said.
“We witnessed a sudden surge in air traffic, both scheduled and non-scheduled, since the Mauni Amavasya holy dip on January 29. The graph went perpendicular and the rush was beyond our expectations. Airport operations have certainly got challenging since that point,” Prayagraj Airport Director Mukesh Chandra Upadhyay told PTI.
“Besides President Draupadi Murmu and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, we have hosted governors, chief ministers, MPs, MLAs, business leaders, international delegates, bureaucrats and celebrities from various walks of life. A significant majority of them avail of chartered flights and private planes for a dip at the Sangam which they consider a one-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” he added.
Upadhyay said that the airport recently received a contingent of about 180 politicians from Rajasthan who availed of chartered fights for a dip at the Kumbh.
The corporate bigwigs who have passed through the airport for the Maha Kumbh included the Ambani brothers Mukesh and Anil, chairman of the Adani Group Gautam Adani, Hero Motocorp chairman Pawan Munjal, chairman of the Vedanta Group Anil Agarwal, and leaders of the Hinduja Group and TVS Group, all of who arrived with family.
Operated jointly by the Indian Air Force and the AAI, the Prayagraj airport, whose construction was completed in 1931 and was upgraded with the addition of a new civil terminal extension ahead of Kumbh 2019, currently boasts a night landing facility with CAT II Instrument Landing System.
While the airport handled less than one lakh passengers during Kumbh 2019, footfall at the airport has already crossed three lakhs during the ongoing Maha Kumbh and is likely to significantly jump till the congregation officially draws to a close on February 26 after the Maha Shivratri holy dip.
Marking yet another milestone, the airport recently revived a long-dormant legacy after it received an international chartered flight carrying Laurene Powell Jobs, American billionaire and wife of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, and her associates from Bhutan who made a trip to the Kumbh in January this year.
According to Uttar Pradesh state officials, this was the first international flight which operated out of the airport in 93 years, since the last flight took off from Allahabad for London in 1932.
