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AVIATION

proposals from 15 airlines, that included rent financial challenges in these areas. sluggish and did not meet deadlines,
existing bidders like Air India-subsidiary Obviously, the routes should only be allo- which further constrained the airlines in
Alliance Air, IndiGo, Spice Jet, Jet Airways, cated to airlines which can sustain these extending operations.
Turbo Megha Airways. The other airlines financial challenges and not see it only as
offered routes under third phase were a commercial venture. The airlines are The future
Andaman Airways Pvt Ltd, Aviation Con- being blamed for eyeing excessive prof- The UDAN scheme is ambitious and has
nectivity and Infrastructure Developers its and not caring for development of the the potential of transforming the econ-
Pvt Ltd, Ghodawat Enterprises Pvt Ltd, regions along these routes. omy as well as the transportation in the
Heritage Aviation, Turbo Megha Airways In last two years, more than ten re- remote and inaccessible areas. Notwith-
Pvt Ltd and Zexus Air Services Pvt Ltd. gional airlines have suspended opera- standing the challenges, India will grow
tions under UDAN for similar reasons. exponentially in income and prosperity,
Challenges Zoom Air, which had also bid for the which will create more demand in civil
Although the scheme had been phe- Northeast routes, also had to suspend aviation. Boeing estimates India to be the
nomenal in its conception of connecting operations in July 2018. These operators fastest growing civil aviation market in
India’s unserved population, there were have cited the reasons such as opera- the coming decades, with rising middle-
many bottlenecks that jeopardised its tional challenges, exorbitant costs, lack class and the standard of life.
stated aims. Some routes had to be shut of airport slots, maintenance issues and The growing population will need
down by airlines due to low passenger a variety of other issues as a hindrance more infrastructure and more planes to
footfall, while some other routes found ferry them to destinations, as more and
no takers from the host of airlines select- more Indians travel and explore. India’s
ed. The burden of subsidy also became a Although the scheme airline fleet is expected to quadruple in
bone of contention between some state size by 2038, increasing to about 2500
governments and the centre. The Viabil- had been phenomenal planes. While there are challenges in the
ity Gap Funding (VGF) places a certain in its conception of rural sector, it has tremendous poten-
onus on the states as well as the central tial in the future. The growth in India’s
government to offer the subsidies to connecting India’s unserved sector might be slow, but it’s
compensate reduces fares. unserved population, expected to rise exponentially and be
While UDAN has been successful in perpetual for a foreseeable future. The
areas such as the South, it has run into there were many global aerospace companies are lining
rough waters particularly in the North- bottlenecks that up to expand operations in India as they
eastern Region. Under the scheme, 18 see great potential in the future.
flights had been started in 2018 to con- jeopardised its stated Notwithstanding the bottlenecks, In-
nect the interior areas of northeast with aims. Subsidy burden dia’s domestic market continues to grow
prominent destinations such as Guwa- at an exponential pace, registering the
hati and Kolkata, however, only two are also impacted the move highest domestic load factor of 87.7 per
operational now. The Guwahati-Dhaka cent across top seven aviation markets in
flight has reportedly been put on hold the world. And the data shows there has
because of the lack of passengers on this to smooth operations. AAI itself had to been significant boost in the air traffic
route. The private airlines in the North- cancel the licences of a number of air- in RCS roots after UDAN was made op-
east region have mostly pulled out citing lines citing poor performance. Adding to erational. The airlines may not get much
a lack of demand on the assigned routes, the troubles are the high fuel prices and a profit by flying into RCS roots, but the
which has created a headache for the tough competition from the established sector does hold a promise of a prosper-
government. Areas like Tezpur, Pakyong, domestic airlines in the market such as ous future if the current growth holds.
Lilabari, etc. have been hit hard because the Spicejet, Indigo, etc. The government from its end needs to
of this stalemate. Another setback for the UDAN has ease the regulations in taxes and other
The Airports Authority of India, which been the lack of adequate infrastructure charges for the airlines to establish their
is responsible for the scheme, has re- to allow additional airlines to start op- presence in inaccessible areas and start
peatedly pointed out that the scheme erations. The airports in the major cities operations. India has a vast untapped
will not be successful unless the con- are already extremely congested and the aviation market if the right policies are
cerned governments support the initia- addition of more routes only results in put in place. However, there is still time
tive by providing financial support to the hour-long delays in flights. The govern- before the last man at the bottom of the
airlines for them to cover their losses. ment has not operationalised a number pyramid is able to fly, and that time may
AAI also laments the business interests of RCS airports, which it had envisaged not be far.
of the airlines saying they should look while formulating UDAN. The upgrada-
at long-term growth rather than cur- tion work on the existing airports was LETTERS@TEHELKA.COM

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