Five airlines win bids to fly 128 routes; to link 70 airports

Mar 31, 2017: Under the regional connectivity scheme, five airlines are set to operate on 128 routes connecting over 31 unserved airports. The fares are capped at Rs 2,500 for one-hour flights.

The first flight is likely to start next month, under the scheme -- UDAN (Ude Desh ka Aam Naagrik), informed Civil Aviation Secretary R N Choubey. As many as 70 airports, including 31 unserved and 12 under-served ones, would be connected with the UDAN flights.

Announcing the names of winning bidders and the routes, Choubey said 128 routes are being awarded to a total of five operators who are Air India's subsidiary Airline Allied Services, SpiceJet, Air Deccan, Air Odisha and Turbo Megha. They would be operating 19-78 seater aircraft.

These flights would connect airports spread across over 20 states and union territories including Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Puducherry.

The airports that would be connected under UDAN include Bhatinda, Shimla, Bilaspur, Neyveli, Cooch Behar, Nanded and Kadapa. On each flight, 50 per cent of the seats would have a cap of Rs 2,500 per seat/hour, Choubey said. Airline Allied Services would operate on 15 routes, SpiceJet (11), Turbo Megha Airways (18), Air Deccan (34) and Air Odisha Aviation (50).

Under UDAN, the operators would be extended viability gap funding -- for which money is partly raised through a levy of up to Rs 8,500 on flights operating in major routes like Delhi and Mumbai. “Through a corpus of only Rs 205 crore, we will create around 1.3 million seats, which will kick-start the underdeveloped regional aviation market,” said Choubey.

Further, Choubey said airports coming under this round of UDAN are in "ready to fly or nearly ready to fly conditions" and the next round of bidding would commence shortly.