Chandigarh Int’l Airport’s Sunday operations to resume on July 1 with six flights

Sunday operations will resume at Chandigarh International Airport on July 1 with six flights scheduled to take off.

While three will fly on the Delhi route, one each is for Bengaluru, Mumbai and Hyderabad. 

Flight operations on Sundays were suspended in October last year due to runway upgrade. With basic recarpeting work completed last month, the operations are now being resumed.

Airport spokesperson Deepesh Joshi said, initially, the airport will remain open between 1pm and 6:30pm on Sundays. The duration will be increased as the runway expansion work moves towards completion. 

The airport remains open from 7am to 6:30pm on the remaining days and around 30 flights operate daily.

 Double the price

However, as of now travelling on Sundays will be expensive because of the limited number of seats. Tickets for July 1 are already available for up to double the price on weekdays. 

For instance, one-way tariff on the Chandigarh-Delhi route is between ₹1,500 and ₹2,000. However, the July 1 ticket is available for ₹3,500, followed by ₹3,699 on July 8 and 3,594 on July 15. 

Meanwhile, the July 1 tariff of the lone Mumbai flight is ₹9,100 as compared to the normal fare between ₹3,500 and ₹4,500. 

Travelling to Bengaluru and Hyderabad on Sundays is also quite expensive. As compared to the normal fare between ₹4,500 and ₹5,000, the July 1 flight ticket is available for around ₹10,000, though the price goes down to around ₹7,000 on the following two Sundays.  The Hyderabad flight ticket is also priced at ₹8,800 on July 1, more than double the usual fare of ₹3,500.

A senior official of a private airline said the prices on Sunday will not stabilise till more flights are scheduled to strike a balance between the demand and supply. Meanwhile, airport officials are hopeful of more airlines resuming their Sunday operations as the timings are further relaxed.