PUNE: The Centre’s Regional Connectivity Scheme (RCS), popularly called UDAN, has failed to take off from the city airport.Officially launched in 2016, the scheme has established air connectivity to many unserved and underserved airports across the country. But the scenario in Pune is not promising.“The airlines that are supposed to start flights as part of the scheme from Pune are yet to file for slots. Air Deccan had started its Pune-Nashik flight in 2017. But it stopped its operations late last year. No other flight has become operational till now,” an airport official said.“One of the main reasons for this is lack of slots. The preferred slot for an UDAN flight is during the day. But a daytime slot at the Pune airport is difficult for the time being,” the official said.Pune got five flights in the three rounds of UDAN. In the final bid of the scheme’s third phase, called UDAN 3.0, Alliance Air and SpiceJet had won the routes from Pune to Belagavi and Bhavnagar , respectively.In the first two rounds, the airport got three flights — one each to Nashik (Air Deccan), Hubli (Star Airlines) and Allahabad (IndiGo). The Pune-Sindhudurg sector would be up for the interested airlines as part of UDAN 3.1 to be finalized soon, the official said. “The Pune-Nashik route is also part of the programme,” he added.Airport director Ajay Kumar had said earlier this month that the schedule for all the flights was yet to be finalized. On the suspended Pune-Nashik flight, he had said that the route was “still alive” and some other airline was expected to pick it up.In December 2018, Kumar had said IndiGo would start its flight under UDAN from Pune to Allahabad in January. But it is yet to happen.Though the airlines didn’t officially comment on the reasons for the delay, a representative of a carrier said, “The slots should be favourable for the UDAN flights”.The issue of slots had caused delays in operations earlier as well. In 2017, low-cost carrier TruJet was forced to delay operations of its flight from Nanded to Mumbai for eight months because of the slot issue.The authorities had said that the flight couldn’t be started, as the Mumbai airport was not giving them the preferred daytime slot. Discussions continued for months and the flight started in October 2017.The airport officials are at present looking for an additional 20-25 slots for aircraft movement in the morning hours and talks are on at the ministerial level.The UDAN scheme is a key component of the National Civil Aviation Policy. The first regional flights were flagged off by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on April 27, 2017. The three inaugural flights were launched in the sectors of Shimla-Delhi, Kadapa-Hyderabad and Nanded-Hyderabad

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