Suresh Prabhu, Union Minister of Civil Aviation, alongside KJ Alphons, Minister of State (I/C), Tourism and Jayant Sinha, Minister of State, Civil Aviation, has announced that operations of wide-bodied aircraft will be restarting from Calicut Airport in Kerala. Accordingly, DGCA has accepted the safety assessment and advised AAI for commencing operations of A330 and B-777 aircraft of Saudi Arabian Airlines with strict compliance with the mitigation measures to ensure safety operations. In future, any other airline may also start operations at the airport. With this move, a long standing demand of the people in Kerala as well as of the airline has been met. The minister also announced that in future, Calicut Airport could be used as an embarkation point for Haj operations too.