Air India will re-start its Bhopal-Raipur-Pune flight from Wednesday as the Defence authorities in Pune granted permission.
The operations of the flight, launched on May 23, were stopped within four days after the Ministry of Defence, which controls operations at the Pune airport, discontinued the permission granted to AI for some reasons.
"The Defence authorities have now granted permission to Air India to restart the flights to Pune from August 3," an AI release said on Tuesday.
According to AI's Area Manager (MP-CG), Vishrut Acharya, the ATR-72 (70-seater) plane will be deployed on the route to provide the much needed connectivity to Raipur and Pune thrice a week (Monday, Wednesday and Friday) from Bhopal.
Flight AI 9865 will leave from Bhopal at 9.30 am and reach Raipur at11 am. From Raipur, it will depart at 11.30 am and reach Pune at 14.00 pm.
From Pune, flight AI 9866 will take off at 14.30 pm and arrive at Raipur at 17.00 pm, and from there it will fly at 17.30 pm and arrive in Bhopal at 19.00 pm, the release said.
Acharya said the response to the flight from the IT sector and students was overwhelming.
Based on the response of passengers of Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, Air India would be adding more flights on new sectors in the near future as part of the regional connectivity plan, he said.