City tourists will have a direct flight to Goa soon, thanks to the “low-cost” IndiGo airline, which will start its daily services from Calcutta to the seaside tourist destination from October 7.

The flight will make a brief stopover at Hyderabad and fly off to Goa airport, taking a little more than four hours from Calcutta.

IndiGo will operate its Airbus 320 aircraft, which has a capacity of 180, on the route.

“The flight will initially operate via Hyderabad but if traffic from Calcutta increases, we have plans to fly directly to Goa,” Sanjay Kumar, the chief commercial manager of IndiGo, said on Thursday.

According to Kumar, the lowest one-way fare will be around Rs 4,500. Presently, the minimum one-way fare from Calcutta to Goa via Mumbai is around Rs 7,500.

The flight will take off from the city at 1pm every day. The return flight will leave Goa at 5.50pm.

“Direct connectivity to Goa was a longstanding demand. The new flight will boost tourist flow from this part of the country,” said Anil Punjabi, the chairman (east) of the Travel Agents Federation of India.

Around 100 passengers fly to Goa from Calcutta daily, and the number jumps up between October and May.

However, with no direct flight, passengers fly to Mumbai, where they have to wait for over two hours to board the connecting flight to Goa.

According to Kumar, IndiGo is also set to launch its Calcutta-Lucknow flight by early next year, along with one more flight on the Calcutta-Agartala route that will also fly to Delhi.