Travel agents urge more international flights at meet up with new airport director
Telegraph | 28 November 2025
The city needs more direct international flights, travel agents told the new director of the Calcutta airport during an informal meeting on Thursday.
The Travel Agents Federation of India (TAFI) has already put in a verbal request for a direct flight between Calcutta and London.
On Thursday, Vikram Singh, the new airport director, asked the association to send a formal communication. He promised to take the issue up.
The number of passengers from Calcutta to Europe and the US is higher than it was a few years ago, but there are still no direct flights to these destinations from the city.
“We will send a formal letter to Air India, requesting a Calcutta-London flight,” said Anil Punjabi, chairman of TAFI’s eastern India chapter.
A direct flight to Cambodia from Calcutta began on November 13. Another, between Calcutta and Guangzhou in China, was launched before that.
“While the Guangzhou flight is getting a good response, the demand for the Cambodia flight is yet to take off. The demand can go up if it can be clubbed with Vietnam, which is connected by road and rail to Cambodia,” Punjabi said.
On Thursday, more than one member of the federation requested an expedited immigration process, alleging that biometric validation was taking too long.
“I will talk to immigration officials,” Singh, the airport director, said.
Singh was a guest at the TAFI Meet, held at a hotel on Little Russell Street. He took questions from the audience of mostly member-agents.
Ashish Middha, the regional passport officer, was the other guest at the programme.
More than one audience member complained about the long wait for police verification for passport applications.
Middha said the verification process was made stronger to prevent fake applications.
“We have had issues with forged documentation. So, we scrutinise a little more than what we did in the past,” he said.
An alleged racket — with strong Bengal links — that forged identity-proof documents to obtain passports for foreign nationals has recently been unearthed. Several arrests have been made in the past year.
Middha encouraged passport applicants to submit documents on DigiLocker, the cloud-based platform for storage, sharing and verifying documents and certificates.
“We encourage document submission through DigiLocker. But this can be done before a token is issued at the Passport Seva Kendra. Once a token is issued, you cannot switch to a DigiLocker,” he said.
Abbas Moiz, the national president of TAFI, and Hitank Shah, national secretary, attended Thursday’s programme. A cake-mixing ceremony followed to usher in the festive season.