Deccan Airways to start direct flights to Gulf countries

Manipal (Karnataka), Feb 1 (UNI) Executive Chairman of Deccan Airways Capt G R Gopinath has announced that the Airlines proposed to commence direct flight service between Mangalore and the Gulf countries.

Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of a private function here last night he said that flight service between Mangalore and the Gulf destinations by Deccan Airways would commence from August this year.

The inaugural flight service will be from Mangalore to the Gulf country during August this year, he said adding that the Kingfisher had already announced the commencement of its flight service between Mangalore and Kuwait.

Earlier, addressing at the 18th annual day celebration of Welcome group School of Hotel Administration here announced that Deccan Airways and the Manipal University are jointly working out to build an airport at Manipal which had now grown into international educational city attracting people from various parts of the world war ranting for such facility.

He said he had also brought his technocrats along with him for conducting a detail survey of Manipal for the purpose.

"If everything goes well, within next one year time, an airport could be built here," he said.

He said that his Airlines was first in promoting low cost flight service catering to small cities and towns in the country to enable the middle class people to have air travel facility at cheaper charges.

"Today 500 airports were under utilized and my major thrust is to have an integrated air connectivity with a dream that the 250 million middle-class people having an opportunity to fly by air at least once in a year," he said.

Capt Gopinath who during his lengthy speech went in detail about his struggle in establishing Deccan Airways said that the company which had started with one flight and two helicopters said that today it had 45 helicopters, 375 flights covering 66 cities across the country.

The Airways today had total staff strength of 4000 employees including 500 pilots and 500 engineers.

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