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A daily flight between the Indore-Gondia-Hyderabad route under the RCS-UDAN scheme was flagged-off today. The ministry of civil aviation has awarded the route to Fly Big under the UDAN RCS-4.0 bidding process. With this, 409 routes would be operationalised under the UDAN-RCS scheme.
Civil aviation minister Jyotiraditya Scindia said the UDAN scheme is fulfilling the Prime Minister's dream of providing air services to the common man. Under UDAN, 405 routes have already been made operational. The Indore-Gondia-Hyderabad route will connect Indore with the two states Maharashtra and Telangana.
In the past year, the aircraft operation from Indore doubled, while in Bhopal it increased by 40 per cent. Scindia said 100 new airports will be built in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities, which will give a boost to the last-mile connectivity. He said the Centre is going to bring a small aircraft scheme, which will strengthen connectivity in tier 2 and 3 cities.
The airline will operate one daily flight every day and will deploy its ATR 72, 78-seater turboprop aircraft on the route. With this, Gondia will become their 14th UDAN destination and Fly Big is the first airline to connect Gondia with a scheduled commercial flight to other metro cities. This is also the first flight route for Gondia as prior to this it was not connected with any airports in India.
Gondia's Birsi airport was set up as a domestic airport, which is owned and operated by the Airports Authority of India (AAI). It is located at Birsi Village, 12 km northeast of Gondia, Maharashtra. MoCA has invested ₹21 crore for re-carpeting of the runway, procurement of Aircraft Crash Fire Tenders (ACFTs) and other equipment to operationalise the airport.
With the new flight route, the people of Gondia and its adjoining areas will get direct air connectivity between Indore, Gondia and Hyderabad.
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