Indigo launches flights on Chennai-Penang sector
The Hindu
Private airline IndiGo began its first Chennai-Penang flight on Saturday (December 21, 2024), with 165 passengers on board the 3.5-hour service that left Chennai at 2.15 a.m.
Private airline IndiGo began its first Chennai-Penang flight on Saturday (December 21, 2024), with 165 passengers on board the 3.5-hour service that left Chennai at 2.15 a.m.
An aviation source, who is associated with the launch, said the daily flight will have connections with 38 cities across India. It is also being marketed as a Madurai-Penang service (6E7253/7515), with the connecting point at Chennai, and passengers having a through connection. A 78-seat ATR-72 will operate on the Madurai-Chennai sector, landing in the city at 10.25 p.m., while a 186-seat A320N will fly the Chennai-Penang sector (6E1045/1046). Saturday’s flight had 20 passengers connecting from Madurai.
The official said Penang has a historical link with Madurai and the airline is expecting passenger feed from Madurai, Tenkasi, Ramanathapuram, Sivakasi, and Karaikudi. With Penang as a gateway to north Malaysia, the airline will cater to leisure traffic, visiting friends and relatives (VFR), the trader community, and religious tourism (Sabarimala). The State, which is a four-hour drive from Kuala Lumpur, is a major electronics hub — Lenovo and Dell have centres there — and the airline will serve corporate traffic.
He said some passengers could take the ferry service from Penang to Langkawi and connect to the airline’s Langkawi-Bengaluru flight. He said the airline has strengthened its air links between South India and Malaysia, with A320 flights on the Chennai-Kuala Lumpur (daily), Bengaluru-Kuala Lumpur, Bengaluru-Langkawi, and now, Chennai-Penang sectors.