First commercial flight takes off from new terminal at Kolkata

KOLKATA: Air India's Kolkata-London via Delhi flight, the first commercial one, took off from the New Integrated Terminal Building of the Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose International Airport, on the great patriot's 116th birth anniversary today.

The 172-seater Airbus 321 took off at 10:00 am from the swank, state-of-the-art new terminal at 10:00 am marking a new beginning in the annals of domestic civil aviation, an AI release said here.

Flight AI021 on the Kolkata-Delhi-London sector had 150 passengers, including 65 London-bound passengers on board, it said.

Passengers boarding the flight through the modern aerobridge were greeted with rosebuds.

From tomorrow, all domestic and international flights of Air India would be operated from the airport's old terminal building till the new one was available to airlines for regular service later on, it said.

"Air India was the only airline to accept the responsibility of operating this one-off commercial service from the new terminal today as its contribution towards the development of air connectivity all over India," the release said.

The new 1.9 lakh square metre terminal inaugurated by President Pranab Mukherjee on January 20, would be capable of handling 20 million passengers, 16 million in domestic and four million international, annually,the release said.