Ministry of Civil Aviation
4 Ude Desh Ka Aam Nagrik
- UDAN/Regional Connectivity Scheme‘s objective is to facilitate affordable regional air connectivity.
- Airports Authority of India (AAI) is the implementing agency.
- It offers concessions to the airlines to encourage them to fly on regional routes.
- Concession include operating subsidies like levies or charges imposed by the airport operators, excise duty at 2% and VAT at 1% on aviation turbine fuel, parking charges at airports and exempting these operations from the GST net.
- The maximum airfare has been capped at Rs 2500 for a one-hour journey of approximately 500 kilometre on an aircraft or for a 30-minute journey on a helicopter.
- The selected airlines will have to commit 50% of the seats on RCS flights (3-7 operational flights/week) and all seats up to 13 passenger seats on helicopters as RCS seats.
- A Regional Connectivity Fund (RCF) will be created to subsidise operations under the RCS.
- The central government will fund 80% of the losses incurred and the rest will be covered by the states.
- This is provided through the Viability Gap Funding (VGF) to the selected airline operators from RCF, and state governments will be required to reimburse the applicable share.
- VGF will be provided for three years from the date of commencement of operations of such RCS flights.
- In general, central and state contributions for VGF are 80:20 and for the north-eastern states & union territories it is 90:10.
- Benefits under the Scheme will be available for a period of 10 years from the date of its notification.
- RCS will be made operational only in states and at airports which are willing to provide concessions required under the Scheme.
- Earlier, there was a requirement of 150 km minimum distance between two airports to be qualified for operations under the scheme. But later it was abolished.
- Maharashtra is the first state to sign agreement with centre for RCS.
- The third round of bidding under the RCS for domestic routes was recently concluded.
3International UDAN
- It is a new international air connectivity scheme, which is an extension of the domestic UDAN scheme.
- The plan is to connect India‘s smaller cities directly to some key foreign destinations in the neighbourhood.
- It seeks to make use of the open skies policy that India has with other Asian countries that allows direct and unlimited flights to and from these nations to 18 Indian destinations.
- Unlike in domestic UDAN, it is only the State government that will provide the financial support for flights under international UDAN.
- Like the domestic UDAN, the financial support and flying exclusivity on the route will be for 3 years.
- Only Indian carriers can participate in the international UDAN scheme, and only aircraft with capacity of 70 seats or more can fly the foreign routes.
2 Digi Yatra
- An ̳open sky agreement‘ (OSA) allows for airlines from the two countries to have an unlimited number of flights as well as seats to each other‘s jurisdictions.
- National Civil Aviation Policy 2016 allows India to enter into an OSA on a reciprocal basis with SAARC countries and countries located entirely beyond a 5000 km radius from New Delhi.
- The initiative aims to bring together entire aviation industry to develop a digital ecosystem that will deliver Indian air travellers a seamless, consistent and paperless service experience.
- All aviation stakeholders – airlines, airport operators, security and immigration agencies, cab operators, retail establishment and others are working to devise digital standards which can enable seamless exchange of data.
- e.g It uses facial recognition technology to enable faster check-ins without requiring any paper-based interventions
1 NABH Nirman Scheme
- NextGen Airports for Bharat (NABH) Nirman is an initiative to expand airport capacity by more than five times to handle a billion trips a year.
- The three aspects of NABH Nirman are building of airport capacity through,
- fair and equitable land acquisition
- long-term master plan for airport and regional development
- balanced economics for all stakeholders
