Solapur to become the 13th operational airport in Maharashtra, Fly91 to start service – NetworkThoughts

Fly91 – the Goa based all ATR operator will start flights from Solapur this June. The airline had earlier announced the flights beginning last December but there had not been any development since then. The airline subsequently added its third ATR 72-600 to its fleet, while flights to Solapur were held up. As per news reports in local dailies, the issues were related to state government approvals for Viability Gap Funding amongst others, all of which now seem to have been ironed out.

With Solapur back on the air map, Maharashtra will have 13 operational airports , next only to Uttar Pradesh which has 14 operational airports at the moment. Solapur had seen flights in the past with Air Deccan operating regularly from Mumbai, with the flights continuing after its acquisition by Kingfisher Airlines. The biggest obstruction to resuming flight operations to Solapur was the Chimney of a sugar mill in the approach path, which was demolished before recertification of the airport was done.

Fly91 will connect Solapur to Goa with flights starting June 09, 2025. 

Flights will operate on Mondays, Friday, Saturday and Sundays.

With the launch of Solapur, Maharashtra will have Mumbai, Pune, Nagpur, Aurangabad, Nashik, Shirdi, Kolhapur, Nanded, Jalgaon, Gondia, Amravati and Sindhudurg as operational airports. The state also has other airports like Latur – which has seen scheduled commercial service in the past, Akola, Dharashiv, Yavatmal, Shirpur, Baramati, Dhule, Karad and Ratnagiri.

Interestingly, Fly91 may be based in Goa, but it has more connectivity with Maharashtra and within Maharashtra with flights between Pune – Jalgaon, Pune – Sindhudurg, Goa – Jalgaon, Jalgaon – Hyderabad and now Goa – Solapur. The airline operates from Goa’s Manohar International Airport at Mopa, North Goa. 

Solapur is a regional centre in Maharashtra with focus on Small and Medium Scale industries. The city will also need a connection to Mumbai in future. Typically, all smaller cities in any state have more connect to the state capital and attracts more traffic to the state capital and a regional hub, which could be Hyderabad in the case of Solapur.

Network Thoughts

Fly91 is possibly in need of more planes now. Its initial network including UDAN routes has seen a sea change with the airline currently not operating to Bengaluru from where it operated to both Goa and Sindhudurg, the latter under UDAN. With a base in Goa, it has its aircraft flyout first thing in the morning from Goa, when the country wants to land in Goa, but its three aircraft will now be utilised with some mix of commercial (non-UDAN) and UDAN routes.

Found this article informative? Think of supporting Network Thoughts with Power of 10

Running this website incurs some cost, along with the data sourced for analytics. If you have liked this article, consider paying INR 10 via UPI. The site will continue to be free. This will help with the maintenance, upkeep and funding the research. You can also pay via Debit or Credit card by clicking on this link.

You can support Network Thoughts by ordering Network Thoughts baggage tags !

Follow NetworkThoughts on X (Formerly Twitter),  Bsky, Facebook and YouTube.