The Hindu : New Delhi News : New regional airlines coming soon

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Aug 10, 2007
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New Delhi

New Delhi

New regional airlines coming soon

Vinay Kumar

NEW DELHI: With a view to promoting air connectivity in non-metro cities, the Government on Thursday announced a new separate category of permit for domestic airlines – Scheduled Operator For Regional Airlines.

Unveiling new norms for operating a regional airline, Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel said the Government would give permit to a carrier to operate primarily between airports of any of the four regions – North, South, West and East/North East. He said the new classifications and guidelines have been notified by the Ministry and come into force with immediate effect.

On grounds of operational and commercial exigencies, the airline companies would be allowed to operate flights from airports in their designated region to all airports in any other region except the metro airports of the other region.

The regional airlines would not be permitted to operate on Category 1 routes of route dispersal guidelines. For the purpose of the new policy , the metro airports would be Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Bangalore and Hyderabad.

For starting a regional airline, the company would have to acquire at least three aircraft within one year and at the end of two years, the company would be required to operate with a minimum of five planes. The paid up capital of the company should be Rs. 30 crore for aircraft of and above 40,000 kg take off mass up to three aircraft.

Addition of each aircraft would need additional Rs. 10 crore subject to a maximum of Rs. 50 crore after which no further enhancement of equity would be required.

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