Calcutta: A private flight landed at the Pakyong airport in Sikkim for the first time on Saturday morning, prompting civil aviation officials to express the hope that the airport might be operational in a month.

The SpiceJet test flight from Calcutta landed at the Pakyong airport - 4,600ft above the sea level and around 30km from Sikkim's capital Gangtok - around 11.45am.

"It was a smooth and successful landing. We are expecting the commercial operations to start soon," said Pakyong airport director R. Manjunatha. The Bombardier Q400, a turboprop aircraft with 78 passenger seats, took around one-and-a-half-hours to reach Pakyong from Calcutta.

A team was standing by at the Bagdogra airport, off Siliguri, in case an emergency cropped up and the flight failed to land at Pakyong.

An air force aircraft recently made a test landing at the airport.

The directorate-general of civil aviation, the regulatory authority for civil aviation in India, inspected the airport on Saturday.

Based on the report, the authorities will decide whether the Pakyong airport will be issued a licence.

"The airport has complied with a set of recommendations of the directorate-general of civil aviation. We hope the licence will be issued this month," an official of the Airports Authority of India said.

SpiceJet has been granted the permission to fly to Pakyong from Calcutta and Guwahati under the civil aviation ministry's regional connectivity scheme UDAN (Ude Desh Ka Aam Nagrik), which aims to revive airports equipped to handle commercial flights but are still not operational.

SpiceJet sources said it would operate aircraft similar to Bombardier Q400 to and from Pakyong.

The airline has prepared a tentative schedule for the Calcutta-Pakyong-Guwahati route (see chart).

"The timings are such that tourists from Calcutta can reach Gangtok by noon. And those who are returning to the city from Sikkim will not have to start early. We are expecting good traffic except for the monsoon months," a SpiceJet official said.

Tourists headed for Gangtok by air now have to fly to Bagdogra and travel more than four hours by road - 123km - to reach Gangtok.

Air connectivity will also spare tourists and Sikkim the uncertainty over travel resulting from the political unrest in Darjeeling.

The Pakyong airport's terminal building is spread across 3,200sq m and has five check-in counters and two X-ray machines for scanning registered luggage.

"We have provisions for increasing the number of counters. The terminal can handle more than 50 arriving and a similar number of departing passengers at a time," airport director Manjunatha said.