Three more UDAN flights to begin from Karnataka from March

Three more flights under Regional Connectivity Scheme or UDAN are likely to start operations from Karnataka from March.

Two-way flights from Vidyanagar and Salem to Bengaluru and Chennai to Mysuru is scheduled to start operations from March, officials said. These services were allotted during the first round of UDAN bidding in March 2017.

The Bengaluru-Vidyanagar-Bengaluru flight will be operated by Trujet which will commence its service from March. Officials said the Salem-Bengaluru-Salem and Mysuru-Chennai-Mysuru has been awarded to Air Odisha and it is also likely to start operation from March.

According to the scheme, up to 40 seats in such flights would have a cap of Rs 2,500 per seat/hour.

Altogether, 97 UDAN services awarded in the first round of bidding are likely to commence services this March;  of which 51 are confirmed. Thirty-one services of Air Odisha, eight of Deccan Air and seven of Trujet are likely to commence operations in March.

Deccan Air will start its operations from Shillong to other north-eastern destinations like Imphal, Dimapur, Aizwal and Agartala next month.

In the south, among others, the services that will be operational from March are routes like Vijayawada-Kadapa, Kadapa-Chennai and Chennai-Salem.

The second round of bidding, results of which was announced last month, saw five airlines winning bids to operate services from Koppal and Hubballi to ten destinations under UDAN.

IndiGo, SpiceJet, Air Alliance, Turbo Aviation and Ghodawat won these routes in the second round of bidding under UDAN scheme.

Airlines are in the process of operating services on these routes and expected to start it soon, officials said. The routes include flights from Baldota/Koppal to Bengaluru, Goa and Hyderabad and Hubballi to Ahmedabad, Chennai, Kochi, Goa, Hindon, Hyderabad, Kannur, Pune and Tirupati.