New Delhi: A new policy to encourage airlines to fly to smaller cities and make regional air connectivity commercially viable is likely to be ready in the next three months.
"The Civil Aviation Ministry is coming up with a new route dispersal policy to establish better air connectivity to small cities, which would include various measures to encourage airlines to begin operations to such places," Civil Aviation Minister Ajit Singh said here Wednesday.
A consultant, hired to prepare a draft of the policy to promote regional air connectivity, will submit its report by January 31, this year.
"We hope to be able to have some policy in place in about two months after this report is submitted. The idea is to make these (flying) operations more commercially viable," the Minister said during an informal interaction with reporters.
Noting that the existing route dispersal guidelines which make it mandatory for airlines to fly to North eastern states, J&K and Andaman & Nicobar Islands had many loopholes, he said while these loopholes would be plugged, it is unlikely that the existing sops provided to airlines to improve regional connectivity would be done away with.
03/01/12 Greater Kashmir
