On Utkela-Bhubaneshwar flight launch civil aviation minister commends regional carriers’ role in building India’s air connectivity

While scheduled airlines were playing an important role by ferrying passengers between major Indian cities, the newly emerged regional airlines are making an equally stellar contribution by enhancing air connectivity to places that were once counted amongst the poorest in the country, the Union minister for civil aviation has said.

“Be it Star Air, IndiaOne Air, flybig or Fly91, all of them are playing an important role. While major scheduled carriers link big cities, these regional airlines are reaching the passenger from big cities to small centres under a hub and spoke model,” Jyotiraditya Scindia, Minister of Civil Aviation said Thursday.

Scindia who was speaking at the inauguration of Ahmedabad-headquartered IndiaOne Air flight from the newly built Utkela airport in Odisha to the state capital Bhubaneshwar said the emergence of new regional carriers had been made possible by the successful rollout of the UDAN scheme for improving regional connectivity.

Often regarded as the world’s largest scheme to improve regional connectivity, more than 450 routes 74 airports, two water aerodromes and nine heliports have been operationalised under the Ude Desh Ka Aam Nagrik-Regional Connectivity Scheme (UDAN-RCS) or ‘everyone can fly’ scheme since its launch in 2015.

“To date, 1.25 crore people who used to cast a longing gaze at an aircraft flying overhead while working in the fields or living in the middle of a township have managed to travel by air,” said Scindia.

Viability gap funding (VGF) amounting to Rs 2,729.11 crore has been released from the Regional Air Connectivity Fund Trust (RACFT) set up to provide support to select airline operators to launch flights under the scheme.

From famine prone region to rice bowl and an airport

An interesting fact about Utkela airport is that it lies in Odisha’s Kalahandi district, which witnessed a two-decade-long drought in post-independent India following scarce rains in 1965. Things got so bad that by the mid-1980s, the district had become synonymous with malnutrition and the sale of infants.

Construction of lift canals and underground water pipelines have today, however, earned the district the soubriquet of being ‘Odisha’s rice bowl’, the staple food across much of eastern India.

“A district that was once regarded as one of the poorest in the country, is welcoming air connectivity due to a determination made by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chief Minister and Naveen Patnaik,” observed Scindia.

Scindia also complimented carriers like IndiaOne Air for the stellar role being played by them improving air connectivity within India.

“In the past ten months IndiaOne Air, which started with one aircraft, today operates three aircraft. In the past ten months, they have managed to connect five airports. In Arun Kumar Singh [CEO, IndiaOne Air] we see the true potential of Indian entrepreneurship being realised,” noted Scindia.

For instance, it takes eight hours to travel each way by road from Bhubaneshwar to Utkela. The IndiaOne Air flight operated by single-engine, nine-seater Cessna Grand Caravan will effectively reduce travel time to one hour and twenty minutes.