Narendra Modi spread rays of sunshine on the heavily clouded and foggy Shimla by inaugurating the first low cost flight of our nation under UDAN scheme on Thursday. The ceremony took place at the Jubbarhatti airport situated on the outer peripheries of Shimla.
Ashok Gajapathi Raju and Jayant Sinha, the union ministers for civil aviation, Union Health Minister JP Nadda and Pradesh Prem Kumar Dhumal, former Chief Minister of Himachal also attended the event at Shimla.
The UDAN Ceremony
After inaugurating the country’s first low-cost flight from Shimla, PM spoke his heart out to the public and explained the whole reason behind the UDAN scheme.
PM Modi addressed the aviation policy of the nation at the event by saying “the aviation policy of India has never been made in a proper way before, but now we Indians have a good aviation policy which was important for the country of ours that is quite large.”
He further told that people of India are full of hopes and aspirations and are no less than the people of other developed nation and if given a right chance they can perform wonders. And aviation has always been the realm of few selected people which needed to be changed.
PM also inaugurated the UDAN flights for Hyderabad’s two sectors through a video link.
The Shimla to Delhi Flight and the UDAN Scheme
The prices and the guidelines given under the UDAN policy about Shimla to Delhi flight were explained by the Managing Director of HPTDC Dinesh Malhotra.
- The 50% seats in the 35-seat of the ATR-42 airline will cost Rs,1920
- The rest of the seats will cost anywhere from Rs 5000 to Rs 15,000.
Under the UDAN Policy
- Five airlines will operate on 128 routes
- The airlines will connect 70 airports, 31 unserved and 12 under-served.
- The flights will cover over 20 states and UTs
The operators are Spicejet, Air Odisha, Turbo Megha, Air Deccan and Air India’s subsidiary Airline Allied Services and will use 19-78 seater aircraft. They will connect 20 airports of the states and UTs like Madhya Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Puducherry and Andhra Pradesh.
Shimla’s Jubbarhatti airport is located 22kms away from the city and is not working since September 6, 2012, the reason being the shrinking of the runway due to soil erosion.
Image = NDTV
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