A flight from Mumbai to Bengaluru takes less than 1 hour 40 minutes. But anyone who’s ever taken the flight knows that it can take as much as twice of that to reach the city from the Bengaluru airport.

That is about to change with a new chopper service that’ll let highfliers fly from the Kempegowda International Airport in Bengaluru to their office or home in the heart of the city.

The shuttle service will also offer choppers flying between north and south Bengaluru.

Going commercial

With an Uber-like app managing the demand and supply for choppers, the cost of travel will be between ₹5,000 and ₹8,000.

The time to reach the city from the airport would reduce to about 23 minutes.

“There are about 25 legal helipads on rooftops of high rises in Bengaluru and almost 100 more waiting for approvals, which makes Bengaluru the ideal city to start chopper shuttle service,” said Kanika Tekriwal, CEO and Co-founder of Puneet Dalmia-backed private travel operator JetSetGo.

“We will start our test flights from April and go commercial by the end of monsoon this year,” Tekriwal added.

JetSetGo is also planning a similar service in Mumbai that will connect the Mumbai International airport to a helipad at Mahalaxmi Race Course.

Civil aviation policy

Helicopter operations have had very little clarity from regulators, making the operations of scheduled operations a challenge so far.

However, the new draft civil aviation policy is trying to change that by bringing in new measures to boost helicopter operations in India with steps such as allowing helicopters to freely fly from point-to-point without prior ATC clearance in airspace below 5,000 feet and areas other than prohibited and restricted ones, after filing the flight plan with the nearest ATC office.

One of the challenges faced by JetSetGo is the number of landings allowed by a pilot per day.

“As per the current DGCA regulations, a pilot is allowed to make only four landings a day. Our average flying time will be about 20 minutes per flight, which means the pilot can fly only about 1.5 hours a day. To make this commercially viable, we are requesting DGCA to allow at least six-eight landings a day,” Tekriwal said.

Exclusive club

JetSetGo has already been testing private aircraft shuttles between Mumbai and Delhi, flying thrice a week.

While the private air travel company does not have the licence to fly scheduled flights, it is targeting this service to its select group of 400 flyers, making it an exclusive club.

JetSetGo has also taken six aircrafts on lease to offer the shuttle service and use the same aircrafts as backup for jets booked from its partners through the app.

The company has partnered with 150 non-scheduled aircraft companies in India to offer these services.

The domestic non-scheduled aviation market is pegged at $350 million with 1.4 million passengers flown in FY2014.

These aircraft use more than 200 airports in India, of which, only about 30 per cent have the facility for commercial flights, making it difficult for people in those areas to fly.

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