Air service between Mumbai-Shirdi

Air service between Mumbai-Shirdi to take off soon

Mumbai, Oct 18: Devotees of Sai Baba, who have been facing problems of
long distance travel, can now just board a copter from the city and
reach Shirdi within 45 minutes.

Private carrier Jagson airlines on Thursday announced their new
commercial venture of providing a to-and-fro 26-seater helicopter
service between Mumbai and Shirdi on a daily basis from next week.

The fare for the chopper flight is fixed at Rs 3,000.

"Talks for a regular airport at Shirdi are on. Keeping in mind the
changing scenario of the holy place, the air services will benefit a
lot of people," Minister for Energy, Technical and Medical Education,
Dilip Walse-Patil, who inaugurated the services, said.

Yesteryears actor and devotee Manoj Kumar said, "Vatican can be
identified as a holy place for the Christians, Ajmer Sharif for the
Muslims and Tirupati for the Hindus. But Shirdi is one such place,
which is secular and cannot be claimed as the centre for any one religion."

"It is more important for this very reason. Everyone can come here and
find an answer to their prayers," he added.

Actor and singer Raageshwari said that it was indeed this secularism
which was need of the hour.

Chairman of Jagson, J P Gupta, said that Mumbai was aflush with
devotees of Sai Baba and considering that most film personalities
visited the shrine to offer prayers on several occasions, the airline
started the services.