Regional Connectivity Scheme – UDAN 4.0 | UPSC

REGIONAL CONNECTIVITY SCHEME – UDAN 4.0

• UDAN scheme has established the importance of travelling by air for common man specially to far flung areas.

• The UDAN routes feed the national network and the national routes further create new opportunities for the people across the country .

AIM

• RCS-UDAN, “Ude Desh ka Aam Nagrik” is a Government of India’s flagship program .

• This Regional Connectivity Scheme offers unique opportunity to a common man to fly at an affordable price.
• UDAN has played a major role in adding new airports and routes to the aviation landscape of the country.
• 50 unserved and underserved airports (including 5 heliports) with 285 routes have been added under UDAN across the length and breadth of India.

IMPLEMENTATION

• Airport authority of India, AAI has an ambitious plan to develop at least 100 airports/waterdromes/heliports by 2024 under the Scheme.

• The first flight under the UDAN scheme was flagged in 2017 from Bhubaneswar to Varanasi route.

SIGNIFICANCE

• To make travel affordable and accessible to all.

• Ensuring connectivity to the under-served areas in the country by the revival of existing airports and airstrips
• Ministry aims to operationalize around 1000 routes and develop more than 100 airports in the next five years.
• The Ministry aims to achieve this by focusing on operationalizing routes in the priority areas.

FUNDING

• The scheme will be jointly funded by the central government and state governments.

ACHIEVEMENTS

• Three rounds of UDAN have already been undertaken and so far close to 50 lakh passengers have travelled in UDAN flights covering airports in 19 States and 2 UTs.

• Civil Aviation Ministry has operationalised 274 UDAN routes that have connected 45 airports and three heliports. 
• At least half of the seats in UDAN flights are offered at subsidized fares, and the participating carriers are provided a certain amount of VGF.

FOCUS

• With focus on connectivity of North eastern region, UDAN 4.0 has invited bids for six underserved and 24 unserved airports/airstrips.
• The underserved airports and airstrips in the list are at Passighat and Tezu (Arunachal Pradesh), Jorhat, Rupsi and Tezpur (Assam), and Shillong (Meghalaya).
• As per the release, there are 24 underserved aerodromes in the region spread across Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Meghalaya and Tripura.

FLASHBACK

UDAN 1.0

•  5 airlines companies were awarded 128 flight routes to 70 airports (including 36 newly made operational airports)

UDAN 2.0

• This allowed the state governments to provide subsidy for international flights to be launched from their states.
• In 2018, the Ministry of Civil Aviation announced 73 underserved and unserved airports.

• 50 per cent seats on each flight will come at Rs 2,500 per seat for one-hour travel.

UDAN 3.0

• Inclusion of Tourism Routes under UDAN 3 in coordination with the Ministry of Tourism.
• The selected airline operator would have to provide a minimum of 9 and a maximum of 40 UDAN Seats (subsidized rates) .