UDAN gets huge public response
Among the three routes flagged off by the Prime Minister, the response on the Delhi-Shimla route has been overwhelming.
The Regional Connectivity Scheme - UDAN (Ude Desh ka Aam Nagrik), which was flagged off by Prime Minister Narendra Modi last month, has received an overwhelming response from the general public.
Among the three routes— Delhi-Shimla, HyderabadNanded and Kadapa-Hyderabad—which were flagged off on 27 April, the response on the Delhi-Shimla route has been extremely overwhelming as bookings on this route are already been full till June, while the two other routes are reported to be doing well, according to the Ministry of Civil Aviation officials.
“The scheme has been doing good and the response so far has been fantastic. We are currently operating in three routes and we are constantly working on start- ing operations on the other routes soon. This scheme has been launched to make air travel accessible to citizens in the regionally important cities and will benefit thou- sands of people as it will be connecting many unserved and underserved airports in the country,” Usha Padhee, Joint Secretary, Ministry of Civil Aviation, told The Sun- day Guardian. Apart from the three routes made operational in the first opening, the Regional Connectivity Scheme (RCS) aims to connect all the 27 currently served airports, 12 underserved and 31 unserved airports. By the end of September this year, the Scheme aims to connect all the 70 airports. Among the routes that would be operational under this scheme by this year are KolkataJamshedpur, AhmedabadBhavnagar, Delhi-Ludhiana, Hyderabad-Pondicherry, Shillong-Imphal, MysoreChennai, Gwalior-Lucknow, Kanpur-Varanasi, Delhi-Kanpur, Raipur-Utkela, UtkelaBhubaneswar, among many other routes, that would be connecting important cities with tier I and tier II cities.
The five airlines that have been awarded contracts through the first round of bidding to operate under the RCS scheme would have to cap their airfares to a maximum of Rs 2,500 for an hour’s journey with proportionate pricing for routes of different stage lengths and flight duration. As per specifications, 50% of the seats would have to be operated by the airlines under the RCS for operations through fixed wing aircraft.
Koustabh Dhar, CEO of Zoom Air, told The Sunday Guardian: ‘The RCS scheme is a well thought-out, well researched and well structured scheme and this would help in catering to the growing demand in the aviation sector. This scheme would also give fantastic boost to the industry as it will help connect many unserved areas and would also help in the development of many new airports. However, the Ministry as well as the DGCA, would also have to keep in mind the safety of the passengers as many new players are entering the market to operate under this scheme.” US tech giant Oracle will expand its cloud services in India in the next few months with plans for a Data Centre in the country.
“Over the coming months, Oracle will be reviewing proposals from government and business partners to provide customers with the capability to build and move workloads to an Indiabased cloud. The services will offer uncompromised security and performance at a significant price advantage over both existing on-premises infrastructure and competitive cloud offerings,” said a company statement
The statement came during the three-day visit of Oracle Corporation CEO, Safra A. Catz to India. During her visit, the company signed a pact with the Jharkhand government to drive digital transformation in the state.
After signing the pact, Catz said technologies from Oracle are bound to drive digitisation in India, its second largest base after the
As per specifications, 50% of the seats would have to be operated by the airlines under the RCS for operations through fixed wing aircraft.