First Flight of Made In India Dornier 228 Aircraft

The Indian Government said the first Dornier 228 aircraft built entirely by Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) made its first flight today.

This flight was made in a bid to connect airports and Advanced Landing Grounds (ALGs) of Northeast India. The flight will be operational from Dibrugarh in Assam to Pasighat in Arunachal Pradesh and finally to Lilabari in Assam, the government said in a statement.

Alliance Air, a public sector airline company, had signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with HAL, a Central Public Sector Unit under Ministry of Defence to operate Indian made Dornier aircraft, which is called Hindustan aircraft.

With this, Alliance Air becomes the first commercial airline to fly Indian made aircraft for civil operations.

The deployment of Indian made Do-228 will be done in a phased manner. In the first phase, 2 Hindustan aircrafts would be stationed at Dibrugarh, to connect Tezu, Pasighat and Ziro. In the second phase of the program, connectivity to Mechuka, Tuting and Vijoy Nagar has been planned. In the coming 15 days, the airline will connect Tezu and after that, within 30 days, air connectivity to Ziro would commence.