Civil Aviation Ministry launches UDAN 5.0 to further enhance connectivity to remote areas

The government has launched the fifth round of the Regional Connectivity Scheme UDAN to further enhance the connectivity to remote and regional areas of the countryWith this the Ministry of Civil Aviation MoCA on Friday initiated the process of inviting bids from airlines for various routes under this fifth round of bidding for its regional connectivity scheme UDAN by releasing a bid documentAccording to a tweet from the Ministry of Civil Aviation on Friday only aircraft operations of Category 2 2080 seats and Category 3 gt80 seats will fall in this round with no restriction on the distance between the origin and destination with stage length cap of 600 km waivedAccording to a statement from the ministry released on Friday evening some of the key features were the earlier stage length cap of 600 km is waived off and there is no restriction on the distance between the origin and destination of the flight viability gap funding VGF to be provided will be capped at 600 km stage length for both Priority and NonPriority areas which were earlier capped at 500 km and no predetermined routes would be offeredAlso Read Saket court firing Shooter threatened to kill her several times claims injured womans lawyerOnly Network and Individual Route Proposal proposed by airlines will be considered and the airlines would be required to submit an actionbusiness plan after two months from the issuance of letter of authorisation LoA wherein they submit their aircraft acquisition planavailability of aircraft crew slots etc at the time of the technical proposalThe statement mentioned the same route would not be awarded to a single airline more than once whether in different networks or in the same network and added Exclusivity will be withdrawn if the average quarterly passenger load factor PLF is higher than 75 per cent for four continuous quarters to prevent exploitation of the monopoly on a routeAccording to the statement 25 per cent of the Performance Guarantee to be encashed for each month of delay up to four months to further incentivise quick operationalizationA performance guarantee is an enforceable commitment by a corporate entity to supply the necessary resources to a prospective contractor and to assume all contractual obligations of the prospective contractorThe ministry also mentioned that airlines would be required to commence operations within four months of the award of the route Earlier this deadline was six monthsIt also added that a list of airports that are ready for operation or would soon be ready for operations has been included in the scheme to facilitate quicker operationalization of routes under the Scheme Novation process for routes from one operator to another is simplified and incentivisedNovation refers to the process of substituting an existing contract with a replacement contract where the contracting parties reach a consensusUnion Minister of Civil Aviation Jyotiraditya Scindia in the statement said UDAN has proved to be a lifeblood of many regions which are now well connected with places across the country This new amp stronger version of the scheme will raise the momentum connecting new routes and bring us closer to the target of operationalising 1000 routes amp 50 additional airports heliports and water aerodromes in the near futureThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever