Madhya Pradesh government's initiative to rope in new airlines to make Bhopal a central hub by reducing VAT on aviation turbine fuel (ATF) has failed to attract airlines. After scrapping up connectivity to Chennai and Hyderabad the latest casualty is the Ahmedabad-Raipur flight services.

Jet Airways that operates the Ahmedabad-Bhopal-Raipur service has decided to discontinue its flight from Monday. Now, Bhopal airport is connected only with Mumbai and Delhi with six daily flights.

TOI reported that the decision to discontinue Ahmedabad flight was taken after Jet Airways shifted its base from Ahmedabad to Kolkata.

Now, Bhopal has no connectivity with Raipur. One cannot go to Raipur from Bhopal, instead one can return from Raipur to Bhopal as the Mumbai-Bhopal Jet Airways evening flight comes via Raipur.

Recently, SpiceJet had discontinued its services to Delhi and Hyderabad from Bhopal. SpiceJet was the only air carrier offering, which provided connectivity from Bhopal to southern part of the country.

Bhopal airport is now, left with four Jet Airways flights and two flights operated by Air India.

The development to cut air services comes at a time when state government went in for a major cut in VAT on air turbine fuel (ATF) from 23% to just 5% to give a push to aviation in the state in 2013. The decision was expected to improve air connectivity and attract more domestic carriers to the state and also raised hopes of air travelers of a drop in air fares.

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