Mysuru: The Mysore Airport at Mandakalli may not be one of the busiest mini airport in India but over the last three months, the airport has been handling air and chopper traffic to the maximum, thanks to the election season. For political parties, Mysuru region (Mysuru, Mandya, Ramanagaram, Hassan, Chamarajanagar and Kodagu) has acquired special status and no political party is ready to lose votes here. This is why the region is seeing frequent visits of VVIPs and VIPs including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, BJP President Amit Shah, Congress President Rahul Gandhi and Mysuru’s own Chief Minister Siddharamaiah. It may be mentioned here that all the three leaders — Modi, Shah and Rahul — have Z+ category security and Modi has an extra layer of security that is provided by the Special Protection Group (SPG) that has separate choppers and armoured vehicles. All these leaders are using the Mysore Airport as a transit point and land their official planes, chartered planes and choppers here and proceed towards other destinations in the region including far-flung Shravanabelagola and Chamarajanagar. As a result, the Airport has been busy over the last three months handling special VVIP flights day and night apart from the lone daily flight from Mysuru to Hyderabad via Chennai. This TruJet flight that began its daily operations on Sept. 20, 2017 has a 72-seat capacity. It arrives at the airport at 7.20 pm and departs at 7.50 pm to Chennai and from there, it proceeds towards Hyderabad. On an average, each trip has over 65 to 70 passengers and according to airport authorities, the response has been good.
