IndiGo's Bhubaneswar–Singapore service was suspended in April 2026 — four months after Singapore's President made a state visit to Bhubaneswar and eight bilateral agreements were signed. We are asking the Odisha government to act.
In January 2025, Singapore President Tharman Shanmugaratnam made a two-day state visit to Bhubaneswar. Eight MoUs were signed: Sembcorp (industrial parks, green hydrogen corridor), Surbana Jurong (Bhubaneswar city development, petrochemical investment region), GFTN (fintech hub), ITEES (World Skill Centre). GFTN opened its India operations office in Bhubaneswar in August 2025 — four months after the flight was suspended. Singapore institutions are running active operations in Bhubaneswar with no direct air access to their own office.
Bhubaneswar is becoming a serious tech hub — IIT Bhubaneswar, NIT Rourkela, CET, and a 200-acre semiconductor park in planning. Singapore-based fintech and tech companies seeking engineering talent and partnerships in eastern India are choosing Bhubaneswar. The GFTN InsureTech Competency Centre, the ITEES World Skill Centre, and the NTU education partnership all require regular Singapore–Bhubaneswar executive and faculty travel. There is no direct flight for any of it.
The Sadhaba merchants of the ancient Kalinga kingdom sailed the Bay of Bengal to Southeast Asia — to what they called Swarnapuri, the land of gold. Boita Bandana, celebrated by tens of millions of Odias every year on Kartika Purnima, is a living commemoration of those sailings. Singapore sits at the mouth of the sea lane those merchants mastered. This is not a new route. It is a very old one, restored.
The Viability Gap Funding needed to reinstate BBI–SIN under the state's New Destination Policy / B-MAAN Scheme is approximately ₹20–22 crore per year — 0.15% of the B-MAAN scheme's total outlay. The Utkarsh Odisha investment pipeline from Singapore partners, committed in January 2025 alone, was ₹4.5 lakh crore. The Bangkok route was suspended and restored with exactly this mechanism. The ratio of investment enabled to subsidy cost is 1:2,000.
This letter is addressed to Shri Mohan Charan Majhi, Chief Minister of Odisha, and to the Ministry of Civil Aviation, Government of India. Add your name below to join as a signatory.
We are professionals, entrepreneurs, and academics — based in India, Singapore, and beyond — with a shared stake in Odisha's future. We write to you with a specific, urgent, and entirely achievable request: restore the direct air service between Bhubaneswar and Singapore.
IndiGo's service 6E1017/6E1018, which connected Bhubaneswar to Singapore twice weekly, was suspended in April 2026. What makes this suspension remarkable is its timing. In January 2025, Singapore's President Tharman Shanmugaratnam made a two-day state visit to Bhubaneswar. Eight bilateral agreements were signed — covering industrial infrastructure (IDCO × Sembcorp), urban development for Bhubaneswar itself (BDA × Surbana Jurong), a new Petrochemical and Petroleum Investment Region (IDCO × Surbana Jurong), fintech infrastructure (Odisha IT Dept × GFTN), and a World Skill Centre in semiconductors and advanced technology (Odisha Skill Development × ITEES). Singapore was the partner country at Utkarsh Odisha on January 28, 2025, with over ₹4.5 lakh crore in investment proposals received on Day 1. GFTN opened its India operations office in Bhubaneswar in August 2025. The direct flight that enables all of this was suspended four months earlier.
Today, an executive from any of these Singapore institutions visiting their Bhubaneswar counterpart must connect via Kolkata, Chennai, or Hyderabad — adding 5 to 8 hours of travel and ₹10,000 to ₹20,000 in additional cost. The firms planning Bhubaneswar's urban future and building its digital and industrial infrastructure have no direct access to the city they are working in.
We understand the route's suspension resulted from a combination of factors: IndiGo's 2025 crew scheduling crisis, increased operating costs from Pakistani airspace closures, and the non-renewal of state Viability Gap Funding beyond Winter 2025. The last of these is the most significant — and the most directly within the government's power to resolve.
We ask three things:
Connectivity is a form of investment that compounds over time — and one that cannot compound at all if it does not exist. The bilateral commitments signed in January 2025 will not deliver their full value in one fiscal year. They will deliver it over a decade or more. But the doors that a Singapore connection opens — to capital, to talent pipelines, to institutional relationships — remain closed until the flight exists reliably. Every month without it is a month in which those relationships are not formed, those visits are not made, those opportunities are not pursued. The cost of VGF renewal is visible on a budget line. The cost of leaving this corridor dark is invisible, diffuse, and slow-building — but when those lost opportunities compound, the difference will be significant. Odisha has a geographic advantage that few Indian states possess: Singapore, one of the world's most important financial and technology hubs, sits at the far end of the same Bay of Bengal sea lane that Kalinga merchants mastered two thousand years ago. That advantage means nothing without a flight.
Odisha is among India's fastest-growing states. Its relationship with Singapore is no longer aspirational — it is operational. The engineers, executives, educators, and officials tasked with executing agreements signed at the highest level of government cannot do so effectively without a direct flight. We ask you to restore it.
Respectfully,
The signatories of Open Odisha
Join as a signatory. Your name and affiliation will appear in the list we submit to the CM's office.
Open Odisha is an independent forum — of technologists with teams in Bhubaneswar, entrepreneurs with Singapore counterparts, academics collaborating with Odisha's institutions, and professionals who call it home. We are Odia and otherwise. We have no fixed leadership, no executive posts, no political affiliation, no government backing, no corporate sponsor. Anyone with a stake in Odisha's engagement with the world is welcome to sign. We act collectively on specific, achievable things. Restoring the Bhubaneswar–Singapore flight is the first.