New Delhi. Meeting of the Consultative Committee of the Members of Parliament (MPs) for the Ministry of Civil Aviation was held in New Delhi on February 19. Hardeep S Puri, MoS, I/C, Civil Aviation chaired the meeting. MPs Ram Nath Thakur, Neeraj Dangi, Praful Patel, Rajiv Pratap Rudy, Shwait Malik, Subramanian Swamy, Vishambhar Prasad Nishad and Vinayak Bhaurao Raut participated in the meeting.

Replying to the queries, Puri explained the MPs the various steps taken by the Ministry during Covid-9 pandemic for the benefit of people as well as airlines and aviation sector. He informed about the fare bands introduced with floor price and ceiling price and mentioned that domestic air traffic is increasing day by day and has now reached to about three lakh passengers per day.

The Minister said that in the summer schedule, as domestic traffic would increase more, the fare bands and some other restrictions are likely to be done away with.

The Minister informed about the RCS-UDAN scheme giving details of the bidding process and the routes. He added that four rounds of biddings have been done and more than 700 routes have been sanctioned whereas over 300 routes have been operationalised under the scheme.

He said that Darbhanga airport as one of the very successful examples under the scheme and provided information about airports and flights in states of Bihar, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh etc based on queries by MPs.

The MPs also made suggestions about airport privatisation, opening up of new airports, expansion of airports, Flying Training Organisations etc.