Hampi in Karnataka, Gangtok in Sikkim, Pithoragarh in Uttarakhand and Shimla in Himachal Pradesh are among tourist destinations that have been unlocked since the Centre launched its flagship regional air connectivity scheme UDAN to bring unserved and underserved airports on the country’s aviation map.
And with nearly 11 lakh passengers flying in the first 20 months of the scheme when airlines started over 120 air routes to 37 unserved and underserved airports, experts in the travel and tourism industry believe that UDAN that started in April 2017 has also been instrumental in pulling crowds to destinations that until now were difficult to reach because they required extended road or rail journeys.
Incidentally, the third version of UDAN that is in the final stages of implementation listed 60 tourism routes including Bikaner-Jaisalmer-Jodhpur-Udaipur, Ahmedabad-Bhuj-Porbandar-Rajkot among others.
Read more of this in a report by Pranav Mukul published in The Indian Express...
