UAE-India flights: Residents hail new direct route from Dubai to Bhubaneswar

UAE-India flights: Residents hail new direct route from Dubai to Bhubaneswar

Apart from cutting their travel time back home, the Odia community in the Emirates hopes that the sector will promote tourism in the Indian state

Published: Wed 17 May 2023, 7:39 PM Last updated: Wed 17 May 2023, 8:28 PM

Non-resident Odias living in the UAE flew in specially on the inaugural Dubai-Bhubaneswar direct flight on Tuesday, May 15, 2023, and met Odisha's Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik.

They thanked him for his intervention in kickstarting these flights to the eastern state of India.

Residents reiterated that what made this flight (which is operated by IndiGo) special is that the it fulfills a promise the minister made back in June 2022, when he was in Dubai for an investors' meet.

Senior member of the Odia Community of UAE, Priyadarshee Panigrahi, who is the head of an Indian MNC’s MENA operation and is based at Dubai, met the state’s Chief Minister at ‘Naveen Nivas’ after landing from Dubai.

He thanked him for the launch of these direct flight operations, which was a long pending demand of the Odia diaspora.

Panigrahi says, “It was a wonderful feeling to fly from Dubai to Odisha directly in just about four hours, saving time, money and a lot of inconvenience. As a gesture