DIBRUGARH, July 17 � A three-member delegation led by the Dibrugarh Municipal Board chairman Chandra Kanta Baruah met P Sudhakar, the Regional Executive Director of the Airports Authority of India (AAI) during the latter�s visit here and apprised him of the potential for starting international flights from Dibrugarh airport.
The Regional Executive Director was informed that Dibrugarh airport is surrounded by booming industries such as tea, tea-tourism, wild-life tourism, oil and gas, petrochemicals, gas cracker project and above all the city is also a highly visited medical township for more than a hundred years now.
Further, the number of both in-bound and out-bound domestic and foreign tourists has been showing encouragingly upward trend to and from Dibrugarh over the last couple of years, the delegation told Sudhakar. Other members of the delegation included advocate Satyabrata Sarmah, secretary of the Dibrugarh Bar Association and Nabajyoti Borkakoty, social activist and a teacher with the Oil India HS School of Duliajan, a release stated.
The delegation also submitted a memorandum to that effect, also mentioning therein the need to incorporate one international terminal building and one cargo terminal in the master plan for development of the airport apart from requesting necessary steps at the airport for showcasing the rich culture of the vast region comprising entire eastern Assam and a major part of Arunachal Pradesh served by the Dibrugarh airport.
Sudhakar reportedly agreed that potential for introducing an international flight from Dibrugarh to Bangkok very much existed and also agreed in principle to create all necessary infrastructures at the existing new terminal building itself should an airline come forward to operate one from here.
Meanwhile, a source in Air India confided that considering the vast potential that Dibrugarh has to offer for the growth of civil aviation in this part of the country, Air India might consider in the near future introduction a Dibrugarh-Bangkok flight through its no-frill wing Air India Xpress.
