Incentives for airlines

According to these guidelines, all scheduled airlines need to deploy at least 10% of their trunkroute capacity on flights to less well- served areas, or so-called Category II routes, such as the North- East, Jammu and Kashmir (J&K), the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, and Lakshadweep. Trunk, or Category I routes connect the country’s biggest cities such as Mumbai and Delhi or Chennai and Bengaluru. Further, at least 10% of the capacity on Category IIA routes ( J& K, the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, and Lakshadweep) has to be devoted to connectivity exclusively within those regions. Apart from this, scheduled operators have to deploy at least 50% of their capacity on trunk routes on so-called Category III routes- smaller towns and cities such as Coimbatore and Hubli.

Recently, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu India was commissioned by MoCA to identify the factors that are inhibiting the growth of domestic connectivity.

“We will be considering more incentives to airlines to fly to these airports. This financial year alone, AAI will get around 3,000 crore from the airports of Delhi and Mumbai as a revenue share. So it is not difficult to subsidise these charges of 300 crore,” Agrawal said.

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