Spicejet pulls out of Sikkim, Pakyong Airport loses its SOLE flight operator

According to a SpiceJet spokesperson, bad weather and low visibility were bottlenecks that led to the operational constraints, resulting in the airline to pull out of Sikkim.

Budget airliner SpiceJet has announced to stop flight services to Sikkim's Pakyong Airport. The Indian airliner is the only carrier that runs daily flights to and from the greenfield airport in Sikkim's Pakyong. Officials in the state lamented that the decision will deal a blow to the state's tourism industry as the sole airliner decides to stop flight services to Sikkim. Spicejet earlier started its first-ever non-stop flight between Kolkata and Pakyong under Ude Desh ka Aam Nagrik (UDAN) scheme.

Spicejet said they have decided to suspend services in the hill state from October 30 due to "operational constraints". According to a spokesperson of the budget airline, bad weather and low visibility were bottlenecks that led to the operational constraints. "SpiceJet flights to and from Pakyong airport have been temporarily suspended with effect from October 30, 2022, due to operational constraints owing to the bad weather condition and low visibility at Pakyong."

Pakyong is a VFR (Visual Flight Rules) airport and does not have instrument landing facilities. Required minima to operate from this airport is 5,000 feet, which is difficult to achieve on most days of the year, especially during the winter months. To avoid inconvenience to our passengers, flight operations have been temporarily suspended. We will share an update once the services resume," the spokesperson said.

A notice to this effect has been put up at the reception and the ticket counter of the airport.An airport official said on the condition of anonymity that SpiceJet has suffered significant losses during the monsoon season when the carrier had to cancel flights due to bad weather.

The airline, which started operations from the table-top airport in 2018, currently operates daily direct flights to Delhi and Kolkata. Officials said the service withdrawal will inconvenience locals, who avail flight services as and when available, besides adversely affecting the tourism industry in the land-locked state."

We are hoping that services will resume early next year as the weather is usually favourable around that time of the year," a tourism department official said.

With PTI inputs