The year 2018 brings a new cheer of joy for air travellers from Amritsar region. After start of 6 new flights from Sri Guru Ram Das Jee International airport, Amritsar, Ministry of Civil aviation has agreed to demands raised by delegation of Amritsar Vikas Manch for new routes under UDAN (Ude Desh Ka Aam Naagrik) – phase III of Regional Connectivity Scheme (RCS) as laid under National Civil Aviation Policy announced in the year 2016. These 6 new routes have been awarded to Amritsar under UDAN-III Tourism Destinations scheme
Yogesh Kamra, co-convener FlyAmritsar Initiative and Additional Secretary Amritsar Vikas Manch (AVM) said “The Ministry of Tourism, Government of India intends to enhance point-to-point air connectivity of tourism destinations in the country and has identified certain routes to incentivize airlines to commence operations on such routes under UDAN phase III of Regional Connectivity Scheme.
Kamra informed that a delegation of Amritsar Vikas Manch in July 2018 along with Vijay Sampla MOS had an exclusive meetings with Minister State for Civil Aviation Sh.Jayant Sinha and Minister of State for Tourism KJ Alphons and a memorandum was handed over to them for restoration of direct flights between Amritsar to London, increase direct domestic flights between Amritsar and cities of tourism importance along with demand for increasing frequency of Amritsar-Nanded flight to at least 4 days a week. I am very happy to inform that government has acceded to our request to have 6 new unique direct domestic connections of tourism importance from Amritsar.
Kamra said, Ministry of Civil Aviation (MoCA) has invited airlines to bid on 6 new air routes of tourism importance for direct flights from Amritsar to be including under UDAN 3.0 scheme. Cities of Patna, Varanasi, Kolkata, Dharamsala, Jaipur and Goa have been listed as UDAN 3.0 routes from Amritsar. He said Not only these cities will exchange tourists between the cities these flights will also open up opportunities of business and trading. Additionally, it will be big boost to International connectivity of these cities as their passengers will be able to board and connect to International flights via Amritsar to Birmingham, Dubai, Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Ashgabat, Doha, Tashkent etc.
Sameep Singh Gumtala, Convener FlyAmritsar Initiative and Overseas Secretary, Amritsar Vikas Manch thanked Central government for addition of Amritsar Airport in the scheme. He said that the importance of UDAN-RCS scheme is to add several hundred financially-viable capped-airfare new regional flight routes to connect more than 100 underserved and unserved airports in smaller towns with each other as well as with well served airports in bigger cities by using “Viability Gap Funding” (VGF) wherever needed. Our new domestic connections will have final bid selection by airlines by January 2019 and we expect to have these new routes operational in early 2019.
Gumtala said, year 2018 has got new flights to Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia), Dubai (UAE), Bangkok (Thailand), Hyderabad, Goa and additional flights to Bangalore and 2019 looks forward to having more direct flight connections from holy city of Amritsar. He said a very focused and strong lobbying is being done under FlyAmritsar initiative to have Amritsar-London flight restored and a taskforce team has been setup to synergize the efforts to raise our demands at a global level.
