GUWAHATI: Air connectivity under the UDAN (Ude Desh Ka Aam Nagrik) scheme now has a new dimension with the Union ministry of civil aviation planning to have water aerodromes in two destinations in Assam, and link them with airports, including Shillong, via seaplanes.
According to official sources, the directorate general of civil aviation (DGCA) has allowed flight operations through seaplanes from six select water aerodromes under the third round of UDAN, of which two are in Assam – Guwahati Riverfront in Kamrup Metro district and Umrangso Reservoir in Dima Hasao district.
Union civil aviation minister, Suresh Prabhu recently handed over the letters of award to successful airlines under UDAN 3. Accordingly, SpiceJet has been selected as the airline to connect Guwahati Riverfront to Jorhat, Guwahati Riverfront to Umrangso Reservoir and Guwahati Riverfront to Shillong.
A seaplane is a powered fixed-wing aircraft capable of taking off and landing on water.
Two categories of seaplanes – less than nine seats (Category 1A) and between nine and 20 seats (Category 1) will be allowed and the viability gap funding (VGF) per seat shall be based on the fixed-wing aircraft for Category 1 and Category 1A.
Apart from seaplane links, the ministry is also planning to bring in a number of routes in the Northeast under the ambit of the UDAN besides inclusion of tourism routes under UDAN 3 in coordination with the Union ministry of tourism.
Alliance Air currently operates certain routes in North-East Region based on an arrangement with DoNER ministry. The current tenure of award of such routes ends on March 31 this year.
“Accordingly, the routes included in UDAN 3 are Kolkata-Shillong-Kolkata, Guwahati-Lilabari-Guwahati, Guwahati-Tezpur-Guwahati and Guwahati-Pasighat-Guwahati. In order to provide continuing connectivity to the North Eastern Region, these routes shall be made operational from April 1, 2019. Funds for the VGF support for such routes will be provided by the ministry,” sources said.
Airports Authority of India (AAI), the implementing agency of UDAN, received 111 initial proposals and 17 counter proposals from 15 bidders covering more than 350 UDAN routes.
Currently 16 un-served airports, 17 under-served airports, six water aerodromes and 50 served airports (for a total of 89 airports) would be connected based on the proposals identified for award. As many as 235 routes, comprising 189 RCS (Regional Connectivity Scheme) routes and 46 tourism routes would be connected across 29 states in the country.
The proposals identified to be awarded would add another 69.30 lakh seats annually across the RCS Routes with more than 1 lakh annual seats through seaplanes and more than 15 lakh annual seats on tourism routes. This is in addition to the number of seats created under UDAN 1 (13 lakh) and UDAN 2 (29 lakh).
Sources further informed that requests from a few state governments, including Northeast Region, would be considered to cover specific pre-determined routes under the special round of UDAN to help connect remote areas. Un-served routes connecting served airports would be considered for bidding with support from state governments and ministries such as tourism and DoNER.