New Delhi, Jan 20: Around 43 unserved airports in the country including five from Odisha are expected to have flight operations from next month in a phased manner with the AAI receiving 43 initial proposals from 11 bidders for 190 routes under the regional air connectivity scheme UDAN. These airports are Bhubaneswar, Jharsuguda, Jeypore, Rourkela and Utkela (Kalahandi). The government’s ambitious UDAN (Ude Desh Ke Aam Naagrik) scheme, under which fares have been capped at Rs 2,500 for a one-hour flight, aims at boosting air connectivity to and from unserved and under-served airports and making flying more affordable. Making the announcement here, Minister of State for Civil Aviation, Jayant Sinha said that the “game changer” and “step change” UDAN scheme would boost the national and regional aviation in the country. He said the government hopes to have the first flight under UDAN in February as several airports like in Jaisalmer (Rajasthan) and Cooch Behar (West Bengal) are “ready to go”. The bids for the routes would be finalised by Feb 3.
In all, 11 bidders have come forward to connect 30 airports which are currently operational, 12 which are underserved and 43 where not a single flight lands, according to the Civil Aviation Ministry. In all, 55 airports, which have either no operations or limited operations, would have regular flights now. Airports such as Bikaner, Jaisalmer, Jalgaon and Cooch Behar, and Pant Nagar are some of the airports which are “ready to go” now and just need operators to launch flights. According to the Civil Aviation Ministry, Maharashtra has the highest number of unserved airports at 19, followed by Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh at 11 each. Similarly, West Bengal and Karnataka have seven such airports each which do not have one single flight operations. Unserved airports are the one where there is no flight operations whereas the underserved airports have been categorized as the ones which have three or less flight per week. While the deadline for submitting initial proposals ended on Jan 16, the counter bids for them can be submitted till Feb 1. After that, the routes would be awarded to bidders who quote the lowest Viability Gap Funding (VGF) requirement against the routes.
Under UDAN, the participating airlines would be extended VGF that would be jointly funded by the Centre and the state government concerned. Towards VGF, the government has started charging Rs 8,500 levy per departure of flights on major routes. However, airlines have challenged the charging of levy in the court. The Government has already received “some of the funds” in the RCS and that Government is expecting cooperation from other airlines to participate in that. The civil aviation Ministry and AAI have already signed MoUs with 15 state governments for the implementation of the RCS scheme while three more states are in discussion for the same. UDAN, which would be in place for 10 years, was launched in Oct 2016 and seeks to provide connectivity to unserved and under-served regions through revival of existing air strips and airports.
