My experience flying Ahmedabad to Mundra & back in an air taxi

One needs to declare body weight at the time of booking the tickets, probably this goes into the manifest and accordingly passenger load is decided.

BHPian arpanjha recently shared this with other enthusiasts:

This week I took a To & Fro air taxi from Ahmedabad to Mundra and back on next morning for an urgent work trip. I guess this is the only active and regular air taxi service presently operating in the country. The ticket/seat prices are subsidised probably by the UDAAN or RCS scheme. I paid 3400 (incl. of GST) each side.

The aircraft was a Tecnam P2010 4 seater single trubo prop aircraft with registration VT-XIA (onwards) & VT-XIB (return).

Few interesting points:

• One needs to declare body weight at the time of booking the tickets, probably this goes into the manifest and accordingly passenger load is decided.
• One can carry only a smallish handbag/backpack + 1 laptop bag or ladies handbag
• Being a small aircraft and probably not a DGCA scheduled route, timing of take off may be quite different, completely depending on traffic, weather etc.
• There were 2 of us (excluding the pilot) on the onward journey, although the craft had a 4th seat. There was another passenger at the terminal with us, but by the look of it, all 3 of us were kind of heavy, hence the 3rd person was put on a separate plane, which was also prepared.
• At the terminal there is no permanent kiosk, there is a window which opens about 30 mins before first departure time (6:30 am in my case), and they give a hand written boarding pass and escort you through the staff security check-in.
• A small hatchback (Eon) takes the passengers to the hangar near the private aircraft parking bays, where these small Tecnams are parked and maintained.
• Flight hardly reaches 7000 Feet and about 115 Knots
• Interesting take off & landing experience (might be scary for some, and surely for new flyers)
• Mundra airport (terminal if you may call) is a small private terminal built primarily by & for Adani executives and Adani jets. (Picture below of the terminal inside, yes thats it, 2 sofas, restroom and a scanner) Allowing it for small air taxi really is of great help to business travellers who might need urgently to travel, and there is no rail connectivity to Mundra, nearest town is Gandhidham, Bus service also I think from Ahmedabad is properly available till Gandhidham itself. So if one doesnt want to drive for 6 hours, this is quite efficient, if available.

Overall, very interesting and efficient option given the kind of work I had. But I am guessing their schedules are not reliable, since the return aircraft only leaves Mundra if the incoming craft has reached, probably if there is no passenger for the 1st leg, there wont be a flight on the return leg. I could not return the same day as my work wasnt over by 4 PM, the last aircraft out was scheduled at 04:25PM, next morning I took the 08:30 am flight, and as expected, it was a return flight from one out of 3 which came from AMD (scheduled at 06:30am).

Another thing is, weather, I do not think this small craft would be able to fly in even slightly adverse weather. The day I flew was a crisp clear February morning (4th). Experienced BHP-ians might throw some light on this. Apparently the same company Flyair taxi operates similar aircrafts on their flight training school.

This was my first experience on such a small aircraft, I enjoyed thoroughly, entire trip all the 1 hour 40 mins each side, while my colleague went to sleep (I was surprised to see that).

Some pictures below to share the experience:

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