NEW DELHI: Dormant airports such as Hosur, Bikaner, Bidar, Jalandhar, Jalgaon or Jaisalmer may soon start receiving flights as airlines have shown interest in flying out of these airports under the Centre’s ambitious regional connectivity scheme. Passengers may soon be able to fly out of these airports by paying ₹2,500 for an hour’s flight.
The Airports Authority of India, which is implementing the regional connectivity scheme, has received 45 proposals from 11 bidders covering more than 200 routes as the deadline for submitting the proposals ended on Monday, the civil aviation ministry said here in a statement.
The operators have submitted plans covering 65 airports, out of which 52 are un-served airports which haven’t seen a single flight since more than a year and the remaining 13 are under-served airports where less than seven commercial flight departures take place in a week.
Airlines have shown interest in flying out of underserved airports including Kadapa in Andhra Pradesh, Jamnagar and Bhavnagar in Gujarat, Jorhat in Assam, Kullu in Himachal Pradesh, Diu, Pondicherry, Agra in Uttar Pradesh, Pant Nagar in Uttarakhand, Gwalior in Madhya Pradesh and Durgapur in West Bengal.
Some of the unserved airports, proposed to be revived for regional flights, include Bilaspur and Jagdalpur in Chattisgarh, Jamshedpur in Jharkhand, Jepore and Jharsuguda in Odisha, Jalandhar in Punjab, Kandla in Gujarat, Kolhapur and Latur in Maharashtra.
As per the scheme, the Centre will subsidise the losses incurred by airlines flying out of dormant airports, to allow airlines to charge ₹2,500 for an hour’s flight to passengers. About 80% of the subsidy will be collected by charging a levy of up to ₹8,500 on each departing flight of domestic airlines and the rest 20% will come from the respective state governments.
The Centre has now invited counter-bids against these initial proposals and will receive them till February 1. The routes or networks will be awarded to bidders who quote the lowest requirement of Viability Gap Funding (VGF) against such routes, an official statement said.
