Daily flight services on the Indore-Gondia-Hyderabad route under the RCS-UDAN scheme were flagged-off on Sunday with ‘Fly Big’ being awarded the route under the UDAN RCS-4.0 bidding process.

With this, 409 routes would be operationalised under the UDAN-RCS scheme, a government statement said.

According to Jyotiraditya M Scindia, Union Civil Aviation Minister, the UDAN scheme fulfills ithe Prime Minister’s dream of providing air services to the common man. Currently 405 routes have been made operational.

The Indore-Gondia-Hyderabad route will connect Indore with Maharashtra and Telangana.

In the last one year, aircraft operations from Indore have doubled, while it has increased by 40 per cent in Bhopal, the statement said.

According to Scindia, 100 new airports will be built in Tier-II and Tier-III cities, which will give a further boost to last mile connectivity. The Centre is also going to bring the Small Aircraft Scheme, which will further strengthen connectivity in Tier-II and Tier-III cities.

Fly Big will operate one flight daily and will deploy its ATR 72, 78-seater turbo prop aircraft designed for shorter distance flying. With this, Gondia will become their 14th UDAN destination and it will be the first airline to connect Gondia with a scheduled commercial flight to other metro cities. This is also the first flight route for Gondia.

Birsi airport at Birsi Village, 12 km northeast of Gondia in Maharashtra, is owned and operated by the Airports Authority of India (AAI).

The Ministry of Civil Aviation (MoCA) has invested Rs 21 crore on re-carpeting the runway, procurement of Aircraft Crash Fire Tenders (ACFTs) and other equipment to operationalise the airport.

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