The Kempegowda International Airport will become the first
airport in the country to have a helicopter-taxi (heli-taxi) service for those
who cannot afford to spend time battling traffic to travel across the city.
Announced on Friday, the service, which will be operated by
Thumby Aviation Private Limited, is expected to take off within three months.
Initially, services will be operated between KIA and Electronics City, where a
heliport is expected to come up. Estimates by the company peg the travel time at
around 15 minutes, a journey that takes a few hours by road otherwise.
“We hope that Bengaluru will lead the way for other cities
to adopt such services. In Sao Paulo, Brazil, a city similar in size to
Bengaluru, there are 300 helicopters operating as heli-taxis. Travel will be
seamless and there will be no need to fight traffic. My appeal to the operators
is to fix the price in a way to make it competitive with air-conditioned road
taxis,” said Union Minister of State for Civil Aviation Jayant Sinha, at the
launch.
Group Captain (Retd) KNG Nair, Chief Managing Director of
Thumby Aviation, said that initially operations would be launched with one Bell
407 chopper that could seat 6 passengers. “We will look at ferrying passengers
to Whitefield and to the HAL airport as well in the future,” he said.
However, the prices have not yet been fixed and are likely
to be calculated based on the interest shown. “We are in talks with several
companies. The target is to price the service very competitively,” he said.
Speaking at the launch, Karnataka Minister for Industries
and Commerce R.V Deshpande said that the services could also be used to ferry
patients in need of urgent medical care. “The city has around 90 helipads in
multi-storeyed buildings which must be made operational. We will work towards
achieving this as soon as possible.”
Current fares charged for an air-conditioned taxi between
KIA and Electronics City range between ₹1500 to ₹ 2500 for a 50 kilometer ride.
The travel time by road could take between 1.5 hours to 3 hours depending on
traffic.
