VISAKHAPATNAM: The Air Travellers Association (India) and the AP Air Travellers Association announced that (Ude Desh ka Aam Naagrik (UDAN) services would be launched in the Port City on Wednesday. The services will commence with a first direct flight to Jagdalpur (Chhattisgarh). The new flight will be jointly operated by the Air Odisha and the Gujarat State Export Corporation and it will be a 18-seater Beach Craft-1900 D model flight.
The flight arrives at Vizag at 9.35 am and takes off at 10.05 am and lands at Jagdalpur at 10.50 am. It is a 45-minute flight. The ticket fare will be less than `2,500 per seat. (approximately `2,000 to `2,500). “We are thankful to the Centre and concerned airlines and we hope more number of UDAN services will be connected to Vizag in future,” said the AP Air Travellers Association while expressing its happiness on the new UDAN service.
“In fact, there is no connectivity problem for the civilian flights except the one Ahmedabad-Coimbatore flight at the Vizag airport due to the Navy restrictions on the flight slots for around three hours from November 1. If the authorities change the timings of this one flight, there is no problem for any passenger or air transport agency flights,” said D Varada Reddy, the ATA (India) president. The UDAN is a regional airport development and the regional connectivity scheme (RCS) of the Centre, with the objective of let the common citizen of the country fly, aimed at making air travel affordable and widespread, to boost national economic development, job growth and air transport infrastructure development of the nation.