No Flights from Vancouver & Toronto to Amritsar

As the number of Punjabis swelled to over a million in Canada. Air Canada decided to start Toronto – New Delhi flight on all seven days of the week. Who advised Air Canada to take this decision is not known. The fact remains that more than 80% load of Air Canada Toronto – New Delhi flight originates from areas around Amritsar International Airport. Long ago, Air Canada could shun Amritsar Airport on the grounds that Amritsar had no five star hotel. Now both Taj Swarna and Hyatt Regency are truly 5 star hotels. There are other hotels also almost in the same category. Now Air Canada has no excuse to shun Amritsar International Airport. This airport has a 12001 foot long runway, which was recently strengthened to take heaviest planes. There are at least 15 fully functional parking spots for planes and the finest taxi-ways. This airport has the latest instrument landing system ILS CAT 3, which enables planes to land with 50 meter visibility and take off with 125 meter visibility. Now all flights coming from Europe and North America can land at Amritsar during poor visibility at New Delhi Airport.

It is the paramount duty of all modes of transportation, including the railways, airways and road transportation to serve the customers as conveniently as possible. Punjabis are settled in Canada since early 1900s. They started with a few hundred landing in small numbers in Vancouver area prior to World War I and their numbers kept swelling in later years. Most of them were from the districts of Lyallpur, Montgomery, Lahore, Amritsar, Jalandhar, Hoshiarpur and Kapurthala. After the 1947 partition of Punjab, most of the immigrants from Lahore, Lyallpur and Montgomery moved to the districts of Ferozepur, Amritsar, Gurdaspur, Kapurthala, Ludhiana, Jalandhar and Hoshiarpur. All this area is served by Amritsar Airport, the oldest in East Punjab, in operation since 1944.

After independence of India, the Canadian immigration laws were made more liberal and during the 1950s, the numbers of Punjabis swelled to over 100000 in whole of Canada, most of them were clustered around the city of  Vancouver in the British Columbia Province. When air travel picked up steam, during the 1960s, the Ontario Province, which was geographically closer to the United Kingdom and India, started getting more Punjabi immigrants from Great Britain and the Indian Punjab. Toronto, being the largest city in Canada and its surrounding areas started getting bulk of the immigrants of Punjabi origin both from England and India. Vancouver got most of the rest.

When I reached the USA in 1980, the number of Indian Punjabis in Canada had exceeded half a million, the majority of them were in British Columbia. Ontario had the second biggest concentration, followed by Alberta and Quebec. Air India, in a business savvy decision, around early years of 2000s, decided to fly to Toronto. They already had a service from Amritsar to Birmingham. It was wiser on their part to extend the Air India service to Toronto. For a few years the Amritsar – Birmingham – Toronto service of Air India was running with a load factor of 80 to 90%. Very high for Air India compared to other flights. Turkmenistan Airlines also had a successful operation between Birmingham – Ashgabat – Amritsar and they were running in decent profit.

Sensing success of Amritsar – Birmingham – Toronto service of Air India, a newly emerging company Jet Airways also started a six days per week service to London (Heathrow). It was also running with a passenger load of 80 % to 90%. Air India had three slots per day (21 slots per week) at the most sought after Heathrow Airport in metropolitan London. They were operating one flight every day from Bombay and New Delhi to London. For quite some time, their third slot was not being used. Heathrow, being too much in demand, decided to cancel the third slot. Air India did not want to lose this costly slot. So they decided to skip Birmingham and route their Toronto flight through London Heathrow. This move temporarily reduced the load of Jet Airways. In a jiffy, Jet Airways decided to cancel their Amritsar – London operation. After  sometime, GMR built a new terminal at New Delhi Airport called T-3. Somehow Air India decided to fly first thrice weekly from New Delhi via London to Toronto and subsequently they started New Delhi – London – Toronto daily flight. Changing gear quickly, they started flying on Amritsar – New Delhi – London route daily and commenced a new service to Toronto from New Delhi. Subsequently Amritsar was dropped from the route to the dismay of all Punjabis.

As the number of Punjabis swelled to over a million in Canada. Air Canada decided to start Toronto – New Delhi flight on all seven days of the week. Who advised Air Canada to take this decision is not known. The fact remains that more than 80% load of Air Canada Toronto – New Delhi flight originates from areas around Amritsar International Airport. Long ago, Air Canada could shun Amritsar Airport on the grounds that Amritsar had no five star hotel. Now both Taj Swarna and Hyatt Regency are truly 5 star hotels. There are other hotels also almost in the same category. Now Air Canada has no excuse to shun Amritsar International Airport. This airport has a 12001 foot long runway, which was recently strengthened to take heaviest planes. There are at least 15 fully functional parking spots for planes and the finest taxi-ways. This airport has the latest instrument landing system ILS CAT 3, which enables planes to land with 50 meter visibility and take off with 125 meter visibility. Now all flights coming from Europe and North America can land at Amritsar during poor visibility at New Delhi Airport.

Of late Air Canada has started another non-stop service from Vancouver to New Delhi. For this flight too, 80 to 90% load comes from Amritsar region. Who advised Air Canada to take this step beats my imagination? More over Amritsar is the home to the most sacred shrine of the Sikh community, the Golden Temple, where every Punjabi likes to bow his/her head on arrival as well as at the time of departure. Things have changed for the better at Amritsar International Airport.

Amritsar is very well connected to the Middle – East. There are three daily flights to Dubai and one to Doha. Amritsar has three flights per/day to Mumbai, which connect Amritsar to Manchester (UK) too. Birmingham is served thrice a week from Amritsar by Air India and four times a week by Turkmenistan Airlines. The European community had barred Turkmenistan from operations over the European Union. But they have hired other planes to continue their operations unhindered.

The Punjabi diaspora living in all major cities of Australia, including Sydney, Melbourne, Perth, Gold Coast, Adelaide and Brisbane is served very well by one Singapore based Scoot Airlines and two Kuala Lumpur based companies Malindo Airlines and Air Asia X. They pick up passengers daily from Amritsar and transfer them to the Australian flights. Scoot now serves Auckland in New Zealand too. Similarly all the Pacific rim countries are served by flights from Kuala Lumpur  and Singapore. Now the Punjabi origin passengers bound for South East Asian countries and Australia/New Zealand do not have to travel to New Delhi for seven to eight hours by cars and buses.

The story of Canada is totally perplexing. This great nation has the largest contingent of high level elected officials of Punjabi origin, including MPs. Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi, the member of parliament from Slough (London) is single-handedly toiling hard to connect London with Amritsar. But none from the nearly two dozen MPs of Canada is even making a well meaning attempt to directly connect Punjabi diaspora living in Canada with Amritsar International Airport.

All that the diaspora wants is direct Air Canada flights from Vancouver to Amritsar and from Toronto to Amritsar. Can’t they hold meetings with Air Canada to exert pressure to start these flights. We have very fine hotels in Amritsar at half the prices compared to New Delhi and Mumbai. Amritsar has been adjudged as the fastest growing large airport in India for the year 2018.

The “Amritsar Vikas Manch” and its offshoot “Fly-Amritsar Initiative” spearheaded by Professor Mohan Singh and assisted by Manjit Singh Saini, Kulwant Singh Ankhi, Charanjit Singh Gumtala, Er. D.S. Kohli, Sameep Singh Gumtala, Yogesh Kamra and Michael Raul among others have launched a signature campaign to connect two major cities of Canada and London (UK) with Amritsar by direct flights. This campaign is in full steam, already about 20000 signatures have been obtained. It will be submitted to Air Canada and other organizations for action. Hopefully something positive will emerge.

(The author can be reached at harjapaujla@gmail.com)