The State Government has agreed to provide required number of trained Special Armed Police (SAP) personnel to the Alliance Air to start flight services from the Jharsuguda Airport, tentatively from the first week of March.
The Alliance Air has offered flight services from the State’s second airport, Veer Surendra Sai Airport at Jharsuguda. However, it needs around 50 specially trained security personnel for deployment in security area, screening baggage and guarding aircrafts. Sources said large numbers of SAP personnel have undergone specialised training under the Bureau of Civil Aviation Security (BCAS), which is attached to the Ministry of Civil Aviation.
The BCAS provides all sorts of specialised training to security personnel all over the country, especially for protection of airports and aircrafts.
Recently, the Alliance Air informed the State Government that it has been awarded the Kolkata-Jharsuguda-Rourkela and Bhubaneswar-Jharsuguda-Raipur-Kolkata routes under the RCS UDAN. It requested the State Government to provide required numbers of security forces so that flight services can be started from the Jharsuguda Airport at the earliest.
Looking at the urgency, the State Government has agreed to provide required numbers of security forces, said a senior officer. Meanwhile, a high-level team of the Alliance Air inspected the facilities at the VSS Airport to begin flight operations from Jharsuguda to Kolkata and Raipur.
Sources said that the Alliance Air authorities have decided to operate flight services from Jharsguguda tentatively from March first week. Notably, the Jharsuguda Airport was flagged off by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on September 22, 2018. The Air Odisha operated flights for some time but stopped services a few weeks later. Apart from the Alliance Air, the Spice Jet and the IndiGo Airlines have also agreed to start operations.
