According to a statement released by the Civil Aviation Ministry, the government has made eight routes operational under Regional Connectivity Scheme (RCS) since Friday. The new routes that became functional include to and fro service between Mysore-Hyderabad, Goa-Mysore, Cochin-Mysore, and Kolkata-Shillong.
The activation of eight routes has made the total number of operational routes under UDAN (Ude Desh ka Aam Nagrik) scheme to 194. A total of 705 routes have been awarded under the UDAN scheme up till now by the Ministry of Civil Aviation.
UDAN intends to make air travel affordable to the masses. Under the scheme, there is a cap of maximum fare of INR 2,500 per hour of flight for the 50% of the seats (minimum nine RCS seats and maximum 40 RCS seats per fixed-wing plane, and maximum 12 helicopter RCS seats per helicopter flight). The remaining 50% of seats will be priced as per the market rate. Besides the low cost on tickets, the flight operators get Viability Gap Funding (VGF) on specific routes for the first three years of operations.
AAI gets a new Operations Head
In another development, the Airports Authority of India (AAI) has appointed Vivek Anand Chourey as the Executive Director (Operations) at its Corporate Head Office. He earlier served as the General Manager of Operations of AAI.
Vivek Anand Chourey is a senior aviation professional with more than 30 years of experience in the industry. He has held several key positions at AAI in Directorate of Operations, Aviation Safety and Corporate Affairs.
