Karipur: The Saudi Arabian Airlines is all set to resume operation with wide-body aircraft at the Calicut International Airport here from December 3. It will operate daily flights in the Kozhikode-Jeddah sector, and the Kozhikode services were restarted after withdrawing a flight from Kochi.
A wide-body aircraft is a jetliner with a fuselage wide enough to accommodate two passenger aisles with seven or more seats abreast.
Meanwhile, the Civil Aviation Ministry gave the nod to the airlines to continue service from Thiruvananthapuram in the Riyad and Jeddah sectors till March 31, 2019. The decision to start services from Kozhikode was taken after this.
The airlines is returning to Kozhikode after a gap of more than three years. The ticket booking for the flights in the Kozhikode-Jeddah and Jeddah-Kozhikode routes will start shortly. Now, there is an option to transfer tickets booked in Kochi to Kozhikode. Boeing 777-200, which can carry 341 people, and Airbus A330-300, with a seating capacity of 298 passengers, will operate in the Kozhikode-Jeddah sector.
Since 1 May 2015, the Airport Authority of India (AAI) has imposed the restriction of wide body aircraft due to runway re-carpeting which had been long overdue at this airport. As a result, Emirates, Saudia and 2 Air India 747 flight operations had to move temporarily to Cochin International Airport.
