Andhra Pradesh government on Friday, January 21, decided to enter into an agreement with Inter-Globe Aviation Limited (IndiGo) for resuming flight services from the Kadapa airport in the Chief Minister's native district. The state Cabinet, which met here under the chairmanship of Chief Minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy, approved a proposal to cancel the existing Selected Airline Operator Agreement with Turbo Megha Airways (Trujet) and enter into a new pact with IndiGo, official sources said.
The Cabinet approved an expenditure of Rs 20 crore to support IndiGo operations from Kadapa and also to meet the state's 20 per cent share under the Regional Connectivity Scheme-UDAN for other airports like Kurnool. Trujet previously operated flights on Kadapa-Chennai-Kadapa and Kadapa-Vijayawada-Kadapa sectors for three years under UDAN. As the three-year viability gap funding support from the Centre under UDAN ended in May last year, Trujet stopped its flights.
The state government, however, approved a proposal in May 2021 to extend Rs 20 crore as VGF to Trujet for continuing the flights on the two sectors for one more year "to provide affordable flight services in line with the RCS-UDAN and in the interest of passenger comfort".
Orders were accordingly issued on May 16, 2021 but now the government decided to terminate the agreement with Trujet and bring IndiGo into the picture to resume the stalled flight services from Kadapa, the sources added.
As per the new plan, IndiGo is expected to operate four flights per week from Kadapa for a period of one year.
Recently, Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy asked the Infrastructure and Investments (I and I) Department to plan and build at least seven new airports in the State under the One District One Airport' concept. The One District One Airport is a good concept, the Chief Minister said and asked the officials of the I&I Department to build the new airports in identical fashion with a capacity to handle even Boeing-type aircraft, a press release from the CMO said. Andhra currently has 13 districts with functional airports in Visakhapatnam, Vijayawada, Tirupati, Rajamahendravaram, Kurnool and Kadapa.