The update on relief operations from Ministry of Civil Aviation is as follows:

• Scheduled domestic airlines have mounted additional flights to/from Trivandrum, Calicut and Coimbatore airports to minimize passenger inconvenience. Airlines are also displaying status of rescheduled and additional flights on their respective websites along with waiver of cancellation/change ticket charges. Eight foreign carriers have also rescheduled their flights to/from Trivandrum.

 

• Based on satisfactory safety risk assessment, SOP of M/s Alliance Air for operation of ATR72 aircraft to/from INS Garuda, Cochin has been approved.

 

• Schedule submitted by M/s Alliance Air for Bengaluru-Cochin-Bengaluru (02 flights) and Bengaluru-Coimbatore-Cochin-Coimbatore-Bengaluru (01 flight) on daily basis with ATR 72 aircraft has been approved for operation from INS Garuda, Cochin airport with effect from 20 Aug 2018.

 

• Monitoring of airfare carried out on 19 Aug 2018 has revealed that maximum fares on various domestic non-stop direct routes to/from Kerala and nearby airports on ranging from INR 3395/- to INR 6999/- for shorter routes and from INR 6017/- to around INR 10000/- on longer routes.

 

• It is clarified that high airfares shown on some social media tweets are for hopping and very long duration flights.

 

• Control Room set up by DGCA continues to work round the clock to aid stranded/affected passengers due to flight cancellations in Cochin. More than 3980 queries have been addressed by the control room till date.

 

• Based upon request received from Kerala Government to facilitate them in air dropping of relief material, DGCA has permitted two helicopter operators M/s Ghodawat and M/s Devengere for carrying out aerial dropping of flood relief material.