Sambalpur: Prime Minister Narendra Modi will inaugurate the much-awaited Jharsuguda airport on September 22.

Union tribal welfare minister Jual Oram announced this during his visit to Jharsuguda on Friday. During his brief visit, Oram inspected the airport and spoke to its officials.

"The Prime Minister will inaugurate the airport on September 22 . He will also inaugurate two new mines, address a public meeting and visit the Talcher fertiliser plant during his visit," the Union minister said.

"The new airport has not received any schedule or any programme of flight operations and their route charts yet," airport director Suresh Kumar Chouhan told The Telegraph over phone.

The Jharsuguda airport, 55km from here, has received a 4C category licence from the director-general of civil aviation (DGCA) allowing it to operate aircraft as big as Airbus 320 and Boeing 747. The license was given after a DGCA team inspected the new airport, the second biggest in Odisha. It has been jointly developed by the state government and the Airports Authority of India (AAI).

The airport has been put under Centre's Udan scheme at an estimated cost of Rs 210 crore, of which the state government is paying around Rs 75 crore. Initially, there was a proposal for flight operations on three routes - Raipur, Ranchi and Bhubaneswar. Air Odisha will start its operations and a proposal is also in place to start flight operations under the regional connectivity scheme Udan. The airport was initially developed on 900 acres and later, 200 more acres were added to it.

People of west Odisha have been eagerly awaiting the introduction of flight services from Jharsuguda, a major industrial town of the area.

The airport will be of help for the faculty members of Indian Institute of Management (IIM)-Sambalpur. It will also benefit officials of Mahanadi Coalfields Limited and other industrial houses to reach their destination faster.