Abstract
The civil aviation industry of India has arisen as one of the world’s fastest growing industries. In June 2016, the Ministry of Civil Aviation in India unveiled the National Civil Aviation Policy (NCAP). One of the objectives of NCAP was on the Regional Connectivity Scheme (RCS), also known as UDAN (Ude Desh Ka Aam Nagrik) which translates as ‘let the common citizen of the country fly’, and aims to make flying affordable for the masses, promote tourism, increase employment opportunities and promote balanced regional economic growth. Even though the national and international aviation market is thriving, the regional market in India is underdeveloped. From the RCS draft unveiled in December 2016, it is clear that a lot of work is done on coming up with a scheme which encourages airlines to start flights to remote destinations, to airports which are right now lying unused and to those airports where there are few flights but not adequate in number. The present paper attempts to elucidate the business model, the impact of RCS on the aviation sector, various opportunities and challenges of the scheme. Performance analysis of Indian airports, before and after the scheme is done using Data Envelopment Analysis. There is limited research within the area of air transport in remote regions in India, and hence a variety of sources from news articles, government documents, discussion papers, presentations, and reports are used. While the RCS is a novel idea to promote regional connectivity, its success will depend entirely on traffic demand and cooperation from various stakeholders including governments, local bodies and airport operators. The paper reveals that RCS is a step in the right direction unless the implementation is carefully monitored.
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