Soon, you can fly from Koppal to Bengaluru at Rs 1,810

Five airlines will start services from Koppal and Hubballi to ten destinations under the Regional Connectivity Scheme or UDAN (Ude Desh ka Aam Nagrik) where the fare is capped at Rs 2,500 for a one-hour flight.

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

Turbo Aviation has won the services from Baldota/Koppal to Bengaluru, Goa and Hyderabad. It will run a 19-seater plane in which nine seats are under the RCS.  

A Koppal-Bengaluru ticket for RCS seat is capped at Rs 1,980 and it will be Rs 1,810 for a Goa flight and Rs 2,060 for a Hyderabad ticket.

The second round bidding has also cleared flights from Hubballi to Ahmedabad, Chennai, Kochi, Goa, Hindon, Hyderabad, Kannur, Pune and Tirupati.

A Hubballi-Goa ticket under the scheme is capped at Rs 1,299 while a ticket for Hindon in Uttar Pradesh, which is near to Delhi, will cost a maximum of Rs 3,470.

Altogether, 325 routes under 90 proposals were awarded in the second round of UDAN bidding. With this, 29 lakh seats will be added, Civil Aviation Minister Ashok Gajapathi Raju said.

With this, 78 airports -- 36 currently served airports, 13 underserved airports and 29 unserved Airports (25 distinct airports after removing 4 overlapping airports from UDAN-1) --- will be connected. In addition, 31 helipads/heliports will also be connected through helicopters in the Priority areas.

According to the scheme, the government provides Viability Gap Funding (VGF) to airlines so that the tickets are kept under a cap. The new proposals will required  Viability Gap Funding of Rs 487 crore per annum for fixed wing operations and Rs 130 crore per annum for helicopter operations in priority areas, Raju said.