NEW DELHI: The Ministry of Civil Aviation is set to double the levy charged from airlines operating on heavy traffic routes beginning January 1 2023 in bid to raise additional funds to fast-track development of 1000 new routes along with additional 100 airports by 2024 under UDAN scheme, that would also include 12 water aerodromes for sea-plane and 28 heliports.
The new levy which would be enforced beginning the first day of the new year 2023 would be to the tune of Rs 10000 per departure, being raised from the existing Rs 5000. The ministry in fact has cushioned the immediate hike and proposes to take the figure to Rs 15000 per departure starting 1 April 2023, the beginning of the next financial year. Under UDAN, currently, 451 routes are operational and 550 routes are ‘in the process for implementation’ with 68 of the targeted 100 airports are already operational
“The levy is being revised to incentivise operations by the 11 airlines operators that has been providing low-cost connectivity on 451 currently operational routes (as on November 11 2022) connecting smaller regional towns under regional connectivity scheme (RCS),” said an official of the aviation ministry, adding that “a few more routes are being added this month.”
“The levy has been designed by the Government to compensate for the burden of low returns and revenue, due to low costs, borne by flight operators under certain RCS in the form of Viability Gap Funding (VGF),” the official said.
The Airports Authority of India also waives off fees like the airport fee, navigational charges and others in the form of VGF. Stating that. “At the same time, the state governments are also providing security, electricity, and fire-fighting facilities free of cost,” the official said every stakeholder is working towards making UDAN more and more successful.”
Under the UDAN scheme, 2,10,494 have flown till 31 October 2022, due to which almost 11 million people have air travel at affordable rates since 2017. For this the government has given Rs 2172 crore as a subsidy so that passengers get tickets at fares as low as Rs 2500.
UDAN was designed following study of 2015-16 that showed 65% Air Connectivity and 61% air traffic was only focused in between 6 metro cities. In view of the RCS the share of small and medium city airports in the country's total domestic passenger traffic has increased by 5%.