Discontinued routes under the government’s regional connectivity scheme (RCS), also known as UDAN, are being put up for bidding again, Civil Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia said on July 30.
The Minister was responding to an article published in The Hindu on July 30, which reported that 50% of RCS routes have shut down since the launch of the scheme in 2017, and that as a result, 15 airports developed under the scheme had fallen into disuse. The article also noted that, while the Central government claimed to have built 74 airports since 2014, only 11 of them were new ones built from scratch, while the remaining were old airports that were revived.
“As airlines create capacities and demand for air travel picks up, many discontinued routes are being bid for again by airlines under new rounds of the UDAN scheme,” Mr. Scindia wrote on Twitter. On the collapse of the routes, he said that they were dependent on market demand and that the available airport infrastructure could be utilised when demand picks up. He was hitting out at Congress leader P. Chidambaram, who cited The Hindu’s article, and accused the government of “boast and exaggeration”, adding that “each scheme of the government can be exposed as partly true and mostly false”.
Mr. Scindia also said that while 12 airports have been made operational since 2015 — including Hirasar, which was inaugurated last week, and will soon see flights — in the 65 years before that, only three greenfield airports were set up.
According to the Civil Aviation Minister, more than 1.23 crore people and 2.23 lakh flights have flown under the UDAN scheme.
