Following are excerpts from a New Indian Express report by Samiran Sarangi. I talked to him on phone. He says that if everything goes well the expectation is that the flight from BBSR would start around mid-November or early December.

Is Orissa set to have its first international flight – and that too to Singapore? Air India has reportedly agreed to oblige, provided travel and tour operators here ensure a good number of passengers. Travel agents, on their part, are confident of making it possible. More so because the flight that Air India wants to operate via the city is its low cost carrier Air India Express. It would operate on the Kolkata-Singapore route from October 7. A round trip would cost a traveller just about Rs 14,500, as against the normal fare of Rs 24,000. A team from Air India, which visited the city sometime back to study the market here, has asked for at least 40 to 50 passengers on each flight. The 185-seater Boeing 737-800 would be operating thrice a week. "We firmly believe that with the present flow of travellers from the State to Singapore, we can achieve the target," said a confident Benjamin Simon, head of the city-based tour firm Travellink. According to him, roughly 30 to 40 persons head for the island country from Orissa every week as business and leisure travellers. A considerable number of them are from the Western belt of Sambalpur, Jharsuguda and Rourkela. … A section of the operators are designing packages that would also include board and lodging at the existing fare at Rs 24,000. It would basically be a three-night-two-day affair and include sightseeing.