The Ministry of Civil Aviation will soon launch international flight operations on the lines of the domestic Regional Connectivity Scheme (RCS)-UDAN (Ude Desh ka Aam Nagrik). The bidding process for some international routes has already begun and operations in these routes are likely to start by next year, according to officials in the Ministry.
The routes that are currently under the bidding process include international flights from Guwahati to Bangkok, Kathmandu, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, Dhaka and Yangon.
Ministry of Civil Aviation officials have said that the bidding process for international flights have commenced only from Guwahati because other states have not yet come forward to show their interest.
A senior Ministry official said: “We have started with the bidding process to let airlines operate on these select routes from Guwahati on the lines of the RCS where airlines will be given viability gap funding to make international routes cheaper and affordable to all people. This will be a cost shared venture between state and the Central government like what we have adopted in the domestic sector.”
“So far, we have started only with Guwahati because the other states have not yet stated their interest to operate international airlines under this scheme from their respective states, but we are hopeful that more and more states will come on board once this becomes a success,” the senior Ministry official added.
For the first time, foreign airlines have also been made a part of the bidding process under international RCS, where even foreign airline operators are allowed to bid for operating in these above mentioned routes, sources in the Ministry said.
Airlines interested in operating in these routes have to furnish the details of the aircraft, passenger seating capacity, the number of seats for which the airlines wants financial support (this should not exceed more than 60% of the total seating capacity), and the number of flights the airlines will operate in a week.
The financial support that the Ministry would extend to the airlines that would operate on these routes would range between Rs 2,370 to Rs 7,880 depending on the distance, the flying time and operational costs of the airlines.
The Ministry has also announced that by the end of November, e-proposals and technical bidding round would be over and that the Ministry is willing to start operations by airlines in these routes at the earliest.