The north-eastern part of India comprises of seven sister states- Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Manipur and Tripura. All of these states are characterised by hilly terrain as all of these lie in the Himalaya mountain range. These states are connected with the rest of India through a small chunk of land of northern West Bengal which separates Nepal, Bhutan and Bangladesh. This is often referred to as Chicken Neck part which is strategically very important for maintaining connectivity of these seven sisters with other parts of mainland India. In view of this strategic importance, the goverment maintains good air connectivity with the north-east, asking the civilian carriers to explore flying to those regions.
IndiGo Airlines, the leading budget carrier of India, also has flights to north eastern parts of the country. By operating these flights, it provides an opportunity of budget travel to/from the those regions, enabling greatere peoplel to people connectivity.
Guwahati flights of IndiGo serve as the back bone of regional connectivity. It operates flights to Guwahati from six different cities of India. Besides the four metros, it connects to Imphal and Agartala. Besides Guwahati, it also operates air services to Dibrugarh in Assam. Dibrugarh is connected with Kolkata and Guwahati with direct flights.
Indigo flies to the strategically important Bagdogra airport. Bagdogra is a town in Siliguri area of West Bengal and is located strategically in the Chicken Neck area. It operates to this destination from Delhi and also from Kolkata and Guwahati.
In the State of Nagaland, Indigo airlines reaches Imphal, the capital city, from three destinations- Kolkata, Guwahati and Agartala. It also reaches Dimapur in Nagaland from Delhi and Kolkata. Flights also exists to Agartala in Tripura from Kolkata, Guwahati and Imphal.
From this information it can be gathered that Kolkata and Delhi are the major cities outside this region connected with flights to the cities of north-east. IndiGo flight schedule provides a detailed break up of days of week and times of the day on which the carrier flies on these routes. Travellers looking to travel to these destinations from other cities which are not directly connected, shall first take connecting flights to these cities. However, they shall take note of the direct or connecting flights and the stopover destinations. They shall also take note of the duration of stop at the layover destination before make reservations.
These flights have contributed to greater travel of people for reason of business and tourism. These have improved people to people interactions, helped in the process of national integration and enhancing development and growth of the north-eastern region.
Martin Wynn
