Muscat: The Kannur International Airport in India’s southern Kerala state was commissioned by the country’s Civil Aviation Minister Suresh Prabhu on Sunday.
The first flight from the airport was flagged off at 10am local time. It was an Air India Express flight with 180 passengers to Abu Dhabi, Oman Observer reported.
This is the fourth international airport in the state, including the ones in Thiruvananthapuram, Kochi and Kozhikode.
International flights from Kannaur will be to destinations in UAE, Oman and Qatar, while domestic routes cater to major cities such as Hyderabad, Bengaluru and Mumbai.
A senior Air India official in Muscat said that direct flights to Kannur will be notified soon by the company management in India.
GoAir, another India-based budget airline, has also applied for permission to operate on the Muscat-Kannur sector.
The airport is expected to serve more than 1.5 million passengers annually and has the capacity to handle 2,000 passengers at a time.