Air Deccan begins flight operations from today: Route, ticket price and more

New Delhi: Low cost airline Air Deccan has again forayed into the airline space by starting operations under the regional connectivity scheme (RCS), also known as UDAN (Ude Desh Ka Aam Nagrik), from Friday.

The first flight of the airline is on the Mumbai-Nashik route. The website has sold out all tickets under the Mumbai-Nashik route for today. Although some tickets from Nashik to Mumbai are still available on the site starting December 30.

However, tickets are available for booking in the Mumbai-Nashik after January 1. A round trip will cost you Rs 3,000. Similarly, tickets for Pune-Nashik are sold out till January 1.

A round ticket for Pune-Nashik route after January 1 will cost Rs 3,340. Prices are inclusive of fares and taxes, the website says.

Air Deccan will soon open bookings for flights from Kolkata to destinations including Jamshedpur, Rourkela, Durgapur, Bagdogra, Cooch Behar and Agartala, and from New Delhi to Agra, Shimla, Ludhiana, Pantnagar, Dehradun and Kullu, according to the airline's website.

The RCS, also known as UDAN (Ude Desh Ka Aam Nagrik) aims at making flying affordable to the masses with fares capped at Rs 2,500 km per hour of flight, and also improving air- connectivity to tier-2 and tier-3 cities.

Five airlines were awarded 128 routes during the first round of bidding for the Regional Connectivity Scheme (RCS) in March. The carriers were given six months to start operations and the deadline expired on September 30.

Air Odisha (50 routes) and Air Deccan (34 routes) had bagged the maximum number of routes under the scheme. Air Deccan had bagged 34 routes routes under the scheme.

The airlines that win rights to operate RCS flights are required to offer half of their seating capacity at discounted rates in return for which they get government subsidy.

This will be the second innings of the airline. Founded by GR Gopinath in 2003, Air Deccan merged with Vijay Mallya owned Kingfisher Airlines in 2008. However it was grounded in 2012 under financial stress.