Soon, you can fly to Kadapa & Puttaparthi from city airport

Vijayawada: If everything goes as planned, Vijayawada will soon have flights to many other regional destinations other than just Visakhapatnam.
Bhogapuram International Airport Corporation Ltd (BIACL) has issued an request for proposal (RFP) asking flight operators to submit their plans to run flights at affordable rates from Vijayawada to Puttaparthi and Kadapa under union government’s newly introduced regional connectivity scheme (RCS). The state government also has plans to introduce flights to Kuppam, Orvakal and Nagarjunasagar in the future.

The state government aims to increase the availability of flights, connecting various cities in Andhra Pradesh. “This can be done through private initiative and a policy which provides adequate support for such initiative. This bid document and the flight operations agreement has been designed to encourage private players to start flights in Andhra Pradesh,” said a senior government official.

BIACL, is a nodal agency Jon behalf of the government of Andhra Pradesh for flight operations. Financial bids are to be submitted in the form of ‘subsidy per flying hour’ which shall be payable to the bidder if mandatory conditions are adhered to.

AP already has five airports which are operational at Visakhapatnam, Vijayawada, Tirupati, Kadapa and Rajahmundry. Further, runway expansion is going on at Rajahmundry airport. Rajahmundry is a hub of economic activity due to the presence of natural gas resources in the KG Basin. Vizag airport also operates three international flights to Dubai, Singapore and Kuala Lumpur.

As part of AP government’s new aviation policy, five new no-frills airports will be developed at Kurnool, Prakasam, Chittoor, Guntur and Nellore districts. Other states on the east coast like West Bengal and Tamil Nadu have five and four airports respectively.
Interestingly, BIACL will also give marks to the airline operators based on their performance. As per operational efficiency clause, each scheduled flight will be evaluated out of a maximum of 10 marks on the basis of a delay in scheduled departure. For each flight that departs on scheduled time or upto a delay of 75 minutes, 10 marks will be noted.
If delayed by more time, 7 marks will be noted. If the flight is cancelled for whatever reason zero marks will be noted. Each month the total of such marks shall be submitted by the operator to BIACL. If the operator scores less than 90 per cent, the flight operations shall not be considered satisfactory for the month and BIACL will appropriate damages not exceeding 10 per cent of the subsidy paid for the month.
In the event, the operator fails to score 90 per cent marks for three months in a block of six months, the block being calculated from the commencement date, the flight operations operation shall be considered unsatisfactory and it shall be treated as the event of operator’s default which may lead to termination of the agreement.

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