The country’s first heli-taxi service will be operated from the Kempegowda International Airport, Bengaluru. This comes as a respite for those who cannot afford to spend time battling traffic to travel across the city.

The service,  which will be operated by Thumby Aviation Private Limited was announced on Friday. Operations are expected to begin within three months. The first service will be operated between KIA and Electronics City, where a heliport is expected to come up. The journey will cut the travel time to just 15 minutes which otherwise would have taken a few hours by road.

Union Minister of State for Civil Aviation Jayant Sinha was present at the launch. He said that Bengaluru has led the way and hoped that more cities will adopt such services. He gave the example of Sao Paulo, Brazil, which is the size of Bengaluru , where 300 helicopters are operating as heli-taxis.

He appealed to the operators to fix the price in a way to make it competitive with air-conditioned road taxis.

Group Captain (Retd) KNG Nair, Chief Managing Director of Thumby Aviation informed that the operations would be launched with one Bell 407 chopper that could accommodate 6 passengers. He said that in future, the service will ferry passengers to Whitefield and to the HAL airport as well.

Speaking at the launch, Karnataka Minister for Industries and Commerce R.V Deshpande said that this service could benefit those patients who are in need of urgent medical care. He stated that there are  90 helipads in multi-storeyed buildings which must be made operational.