UDAN gets wings, commercial flights to resume from Sept 15

Commercial flights from Mysore Airport will resume from September 15, a week before the commencement of Mysuru Dasara.

Mysore Airport Director Manoj Kumar Singh confirmed that TruJet, a 78-seater aircraft, will be operated between Mysuru and Chennai. The flight will arrive in Mysore Airport at 6.40 pm and depart to Chennai at 7.05 pm. As a large number of people visit Mysuru during Dasara, the air service introduced under the Ude Desh Ka Aam Nagrik (UDAN) scheme, will be a boon for the visitors, the Director said.

Earlier, two private airlines Air Odisha and Turbo Megha Airways had shown interest to operate air services between Mysuru and Chennai. The Union Ministry of Civil Aviation, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu governments have likewise entered into an agreement to provide the service under the regional connectivity scheme (RCS), popularly known as UDAN.

The service was first introduced in March 2010. Kingfisher Airways introduced the service between Mysuru and Bengaluru. However, it suspended the service in October 2011 due to poor response. SpiceJet introduced flights in January 2013 and stopped the operations in October 2014. Alliance Air operated services for a few days between Bengaluru-Mysuru in 2015. If the air service resumes this year, it will be the fourth time.

The airfare under RCS is capped at Rs 2,500 for a 500-km travel. The airways will operate with funds from Union as well as state governments. The primary objective of RCS is to facilitate regional air connectivity, making it affordable by supporting airline operators through concessions from the Union and state governments and airport operators, so as to reduce the cost of airline operations on regional routes. There will also be financial support to meet the gap between the cost of airline operations and expected revenue on the routes.