23 June
MAGWAY Airport was constructed in 2001 and put into service on 6 June 2003. In the beginning, flights ran twice a week. After 2006, no planes land in the airport anymore. After slum-bering for 13 years, it will be awak-ened with twice-weekly Myanmar National Airlines flights starting from 25 June 2019.
Magway lies on the Yan-gon-Sittwe-Yangon flight path and Yangon-Sittway-Yangon flights on Tuesday and Saturday lands in Ann so it was decided that these flights will land in Magway on Tuesday and Saturday too. Ini-tially the plan was to use Caravan airplanes with capacity for 12 pas-sengers but finally it was decided to use the larger ATR-72.
ATR 72-600 aircrafts with seating capacity of 60 passengers will be used and flights will take off from Yangon between 8 a.m. and 10 a.m. Yangon-Magway air-fare will be Ks 68,000 or US$ 73. Tickets will be available online starting from 20 June said U San Htwe, Chairman of Myanmar Ho-telier Association (Magway Zone).
When Magway Airport re-sumes flight operation, Foreign Independent Tour (FIT) or tour companies can arrange tours on Yangon to Magway flights. Visi-tors can stay in Magway hotels, motels and inns and visit nearby tour locations. There’ll be more foreign visitors as well as local visitors who will stay overnight in Magway said Magway Region Head of Directorate of Hotels and Tourism U Myint Sein.
An official from immigration department assigned to Magway Airport also commented on ex-pecting to see air travellers as there are universities and insti-tutes in Magway as well as gov-ernment officials and merchants who’ll be travelling on official or business matters.—Zeyatu (Mag-way) Translated by Handytips
