With a focus on infrastructure, which Finance Minister Piyush Goyal said – “is the backbone of any development”, the Government of India announced the success of the UDAN scheme and expanding airport network in India. Piyush Goyal, while presenting the Budget 2019 confirmed that while the domestic air traffic in India has doubled in last five years, India now has 100 plus airports to cater the air travelers need.
UDAN is the scheme promoting low cost carriers to fly on routes which were not catered to air travelers earlier, mostly comprising of Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities. Currently the civil aviation ministry has announced the third leg of the UDAN scheme.
Announcing the awards of the third round of the regional air connectivity scheme or UDAN, Civil Aviation Minister Suresh Prabhu said as many as 69.30 lakh seats would be added on an annual basis across the 235 routes. More than 1 lakh seats would be through seaplanes.
A total of 89 airports, including 16 unserved and 17 underserved aerodromes, would be connected under the third round of UDAN (Ude Desh ka Aam Nagrik), which seeks to connect unserved and underserved airports as well as make flying affordable.
Out of them, two proposals for operating seaplanes are from SpiceJet and one from Turbo Aviation, Civil Aviation Secretary R N Choubey said. Six water aerodromes would be connected with UDAN flights. They are at Guwahati River Front and Umrangso Reservoir (Assam), Nagarjuna Sagar (Telangana), Sabarmati River Front, Shatrunjay Dam, and Statue of Unity (Gujarat).
For UDAN 3, the ministry received 111 initial proposals and 17 counter proposals from 15 bidders covering more than 350 routes. At present, flights are operating in around 155 UDAN routes.
As per the ministry, 13 lakh seats were created in the first round of and 29 lakh seats in the second round.
With Inputs from PTI
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