After waiting for a decade, the brass city of Uttar Pradesh was finally connected with flights on Saturday.

A 19-seater Fly Big aircraft took its first flight from Munda Pandey airport at 10:10 am on Saturday morning for the state capital Lucknow with six passengers.

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Chief Guest UP Animal Husbandry and Dairy Development Minister Dharampal Singh and Minister of State Baldev Singh Aulakh flagged off the inaugural flight.

The aircraft from Lucknow carrying five passengers had landed at Moradabad airport at exactly 9:30. Passengers described their experience as wonderful. Captain Rajesh Parmar and Akash Kumar took command of the aircraft from Moradabad.

Regional aviation company’s Fly Big Executive Vice President Rajeev Sharma said that the base fare for the flight from Moradabad to Lucknow has been kept at Rs 999 at present. Later this fare will be Rs 1999 and then Rs 2999.

He said that there will be flights from Moradabad to Lucknow three days a week. The 19 seater plane will take off for Lucknow at 9:30 am on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Soon it will run six days a week.

He said there is a proposal to start flights from Moradabad to Dehradun, Hindon and Kanpur in the coming few months.

In 2014, an MOU was signed between the state government and the Airport Authority of India to convert the Moradabad airstrip into an airport. It took seven years to convert it into an airport. After this, the DGCA raised objections on many points.

It took AAI two years to get all the NOCs and remove the objections. After this, the flight license was issued by the DGCA on November 17,2023.

The airport was inaugurated on March 10, 2024 and now after five months the flights have started on August 10.