Union Civil Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia.
| Photo Credit: PTI
The authorities has launched the fifth spherical of the Regional Connectivity Scheme — UDAN — to further enhance the connectivity to remote and regional areas of the nation.
With this, the Ministry of Civil Aviation (MoCA) on April 21 initiated the method of inviting bids from airways for numerous routes below this fifth spherical of bidding for its regional connectivity scheme UDAN by releasing a bid doc.
According to a tweet from the Ministry of Civil Aviation on April 21, solely plane operations of Category 2 (20-80 seats) and Category 3 (>80 seats) will fall on this spherical with no restriction on the gap between the origin and vacation spot, with stage size cap of 600 km waived.
According to an announcement from the Ministry launched on April 21 night, a few of the key options have been the sooner stage size cap of 600 km is waived off and there’s no restriction on the gap between the origin and vacation spot of the flight; viability hole funding (VGF) to be offered might be capped at 600 km stage size for each Priority and Non-Priority areas which have been earlier capped at 500 km and no predetermined routes can be provided.
Only Network and Individual Route Proposal proposed by airways might be thought of and the airways can be required to submit an motion/marketing strategy after two months from the issuance of Letter of Authorisation (LoA) whereby they submit their plane acquisition plan/availability of plane, crew, slots, and so on. on the time of the technical proposal.
The assertion talked about the identical route wouldn’t be awarded to a single airline greater than as soon as, whether or not in numerous networks or in the identical community and added, “Exclusivity will be withdrawn if the average quarterly passenger load factor [PLF] is higher than 75% for four continuous quarters, to prevent exploitation of the monopoly on a route.”
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According to the assertion, 25% of the Performance Guarantee to be encashed for every month of delay up to 4 months, to further incentivise fast operationalization. A efficiency assure is an enforceable dedication by a company entity to provide the mandatory assets to a potential contractor and to assume all contractual obligations of the potential contractor.
The Ministry additionally talked about that airways can be required to start operations inside 4 months of the award of the route. Earlier, this deadline was six months.
It additionally added {that a} checklist of airports which can be prepared for operation or would quickly be prepared for operations has been included within the scheme to facilitate faster operationalization of routes below the Scheme.
Novation course of for routes from one operator to one other is simplified and incentivised. Novation refers to the method of substituting an current contract with a substitute contract, the place the contracting events attain a consensus.
Union Minister of Civil Aviation Jyotiraditya Scindia within the assertion stated, “UDAN has proved to be a lifeblood of many regions which are now well connected with places across the country. This new & stronger version of the scheme will raise the momentum, connecting new routes, and bring us closer to the target of operationalising 1,000 routes & 50 additional airports, heliports, and water aerodromes in the near future.”
