Jharsuguda Gets Air Connectivity To 6 Cities Under UDAN 3

New Delhi: The gleamy facade of the newly-inaugurated Veer Surendra Sai Airport in Jharsuguda will come back to life once again as flights will soon start operating from the industrial town to cities such as Kolkata, Bhubaneswar, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Delhi and Raipur.

Budget carrier SpiceJet will make its maiden entry into Odisha, connecting Jharsuguda with Delhi, Kolkata and Hyderabad. Jet Airways will connect the city with financial capital Mumbai while Alliance Air and Turbo Aviation will provide connectivity from there to state capital Bhubaneswar. Alliance Air and Turbo Aviation will connect the city with Raipur.

The new services were announced on Friday by Civil Aviation Minister Suresh Prabhu under the UDAN phase 3, the regional connectivity programme of the Narendra Modi government.

The operation of four air carriers is expected to give a big push to the economic growth of the industrial town. SpiceJet and Jet Airways have no operations from Bhubaneswar as yet.

The Jharsuguda airport was inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on September 22, last year. However, operations stopped at the airport after around 15 days as Air Odisha airline suspended its flight services.

Bhubaneswar, Jharsuguda and Rourkela are the three airports which have benefitted from UDAN 3, while Jeypore and Utkela have found no mention.

Rourkela will be connected to Raipur and Bhubaneswar by Turbo Aviation and Alliance Air.

Bhubaneswar, on the other hand, will get fresh connectivity to Varanasi (Indigo, Alliance Air), Kalaikunda in West Bengal (Alliance Air) and Jagdalpur (Turbo Aviation).

“Odisha has been the biggest gainer of UDAN 3. Jharsuguda was inaugurated by the PM as the second biggest airport in Odisha after Bhubaneswar. I had talked about the potential of Jharsuguda airport from the very beginning. It will be counted among a major towns in India with the new connectives. This will give a boost to business and tourism in western Odisha as well,” Union Minister Dharmendra Pradhan told mediapersons.

He informed that Odisha will get an annual viability gap funding of Rs 101 crore, making it the second most beneficial state after after Karnataka under UDAN 3.

The Union minister also informed that the Civil Aviation Ministry had also made a budget allocation of Rs 1050 crore for modernization of the Biju Patnaik International Airport in Bhubaneswar. “The pre-project work has already started and the modernization work will be expedited very soon,” he informed.

In all, 11 airports were awarded 235 routes under the third phase. About 39 new airports and water aerodrome were covered.

SpiceJet bagged the maximum routes by obtaining rights to fly over 22 routes, followed by IndiGo with 12 routes and Ghodawat Enterprises with 10 routes.

The Civil Aviation Minister called the scheme a “gamechanger” for the sector and said that announcement of routes on the eve of Republic Day was the gift of the ministry to the citizens.

Ude Desh ka Aam Nagrik (UDAN) or the regional air connectivity scheme seeks to connect unserved and underserved airports as well as make flying affordable. The fares for 25 per cent of the seats are capped and the airlines will be provided with Rs 101 crore extended Viability Gap Fund (VGF) to maintain the operations.

As many as 69.3 lakh seats would be added on an annual basis across the RCS routes, Prabhu said. More than 1 lakh seats would be through seaplanes.

The government, this time, has done due diligence while inspecting the airlines. Civil Aviation Secretary R N Choubey said that fair amount of consideration was given to those airlines that are in a position to undertake such operations and flights.

This was the reason why regional airlines such as ZoomAir, Air Odisha and Air Deccan were not given any routes under the third phase.

Senior officials had said that they had declared their bids “invalid” due to failing financial conditions.

Uttar Pradesh, however, emerged as the outlier state with as many as 28 airports being approved for the scheme.

While Chandigarh, Goa, Haryana, Meghalaya and Uttrakhand got single airport connectivity, Chattisgarh, Delhi, J&K, Manipur, Mizoram, Nagaland, Tamil Nadu and Tripura got two airports approved.