Following the three successful rounds of bidding, the Ministry of Civil Aviation has launched the 4th round of Regional Connectivity Scheme (RCS) Ude Desh Ka Aam Nagrik ( UDAN) to further enhance the connectivity to remote and regional areas of the country.
The focus of this round 4 of the UDAN Scheme would be the priority areas like NER, Hilly States, J&K, Ladakh, and Islands.
Revision of (Viability Gap Funding) VGF cap, promoting short-haul routes, well-defined Prioritisation framework, flexibility to change the frequency of flight operation and inclusion of helicopter and seaplane operation under NSOP license are some of the key features of the scheme.
Efforts are made to develop the airports and operationalize the pending routes. Many of these routes will be operationalized during the winter schedule 2019.
MoCA aims to operationalize 1000 routes and more than 100 airports in the next five years. This would be achieved by focusing on operationalizing routes in Priority Areas.
AAI would focus on developing a no-frills airport in the future and routes connecting such airports would be prioritized for an award of VGF.
The market would be incentivized to develop short-haul routes only, providing connectivity to nearby airports.
Source: https://pib.gov.in/
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