Air Odisha takes flight and will soon be flying 50 routes

Theres good news for the Government of Indias UDAN schemethe spanking new airline, Air Odisha, began its operations on February 17, 2018, with flights to and from Ahmedabad. Scheduled to fly 50 routes eventually, the carrier will bring many new airports and towns under the scheme. For the uninitiated, Ude Desh Ka Aam Nagrik, or UDAN, is a bit of a revolution, taking wing in the domestic aviation space. As part of it, a bunch of airlinesboth old and newhad bid or will be bidding for routes to fly low-cost flights (capped to a maximum of Rs. 2,500 per flight hour for half the seats), mostly to remote and regional airports.

Air Odisha happens to be a joint venture of the Gujarat State Export Corporation Limited (GSEC), the Monarch Group and Air Deccan. It made quite a mark in April 2017 by securing the most number of routes in the schemes first round of bidding. As part of this first phase of launches, services connecting Ahmedabad to Mundra, Jamnagar, Diu and Bhavnagar have started. Soon cities and towns such as Bhubaneswar, Raipur, Ranchi, Gwalior, Lucknow, Kanpur, Varanasi, Surat, Pondicherry, Vishakapatnam, Raigarh, Utkela, Salem, Neyveli, Kadapa, Jagdalpur and Jharsuguda will also be added. Even Delhi and Chennai are on the cards for the second phasewith the intent to have such big cities connect to relatively underutilised and smaller airports, in a phased manner.

After Air Odisha, Air Deccan has the second most routes with 34. Turbo Megha Airways (with 18 routes), Alliance Air, a subsidy of Air India (with 15) and SpiceJet (with 11) are the others.

Captain G.R. Gopinath, the founder of Air Deccan, said the following, commenting upon the launchThe UDAN initiative of the Government will bring a transformation of aviation in India. So far commercial aviation was largely metro focused and not many new routes had been added in the last 10 years, while India has been growing in its tier 2 and tier 3 cities. Adding them to the aviation grid will bring a multiplier effect to the local economy and boost the national growth as well. We are encouraged by this initiative. Air Odishas network, which includes the largest share of awarded routes under UDAN phase 1, was designed to be part of this effort to bring about transformational growth in regional aviation.

Flight tickets are, of course, very cheap. For a March 8, 2018 flight from Ahmedabad to Mundra, the cost is only Rs. 1,801 all-inclusive. Indeed, Air Odisha is flying higher up than any other operator as of now, though when the winners of the second round, who bid in December 2017 and are mostly the well- established domestic carriers, take to the air, it will be interesting to see how things add up.

More informationairodisha.com