Fly if you are worried about long road journeys in Madhya Pradesh but still want to spend the Puja vacation in the country’s second biggest state.

Yes, MP Tourism has an air taxi service connecting seven cities in the state. A joint venture between the state tourism department and private airline Ventura AirConnect, it is a first in the country.

The air taxi covers 430km between Bhopal and Gwalior in less than an hour and 30 minutes. “And you are spared the bone-rattling eight-hour journey by road,” said Pradeep Agarwal, the chairman of Ventura AirConnect. “Thirty per cent of our passengers are tourists.”

The most popular sectors are Bhopal-Jabalpur, Indore-Jabalpur and Rewa-Bhopal. The first two sectors have flights six days a week, while the third has three.

“We have two nine-seater Cessna Grand Caravans,” says O.V. Choudhary, chief general manager, marketing, MP Tourism.

The planes usually have room for 12, but a couple of seats were removed to fit in a custom-made toilet. “They fly at low altitude, barely 14,000ft, unlike regular flights (35,000 to 38,000ft). This allows you to enjoy spectacular views along the way.”

The company plans to bring in 19-seaters, at least eight at the moment.

For the first three years, the state government has pledged to underwrite 40 per cent of the seat costs in case a flight carries fewer passengers. “But the response is good and we are flying full capacity in three sectors, including two to Jabalpur,” Agarwal said.

No doubt, the air taxi bagged the Most Innovative Tourist Project 2011-12 Award of the central government.

Jabalpur is popular for the marble rocks abutting the Narmada and the Dhuandhar Falls, where the river plunges in a smoky cascade. It is also a convenient base for trips to tiger havens Kanha (165km) and Bandhavgarh (190km) national parks.

“Wildlife is the biggest draw for tourists from Bengal,” says Abhijeet Dhar, resident manager of MP Tourism, Calcutta.

“The flight timings match the schedule of airlines flying in from Delhi and Mumbai. This is done to allow passengers quick transit to their destinations in MP,” Agarwal said.

Bookings can be made online on the MP Tourism website or on portals such as Make My Trip. “We advise tourists to do only one sector at a time because people hardly get long vacations. If the air taxi is promoted and the fare comes down, it will catch on,” said an official of Make My Trip, Calcutta.

Bengal doesn’t have a dedicated air taxi service but chartered flights operate on request. “There is hardly any demand. We will need a regular flow of high-spending tourists to start an air taxi,” a state tourism official said.