{"id":304230,"date":"2019-12-05T11:32:18","date_gmt":"2019-12-05T06:02:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/?p=304230"},"modified":"2019-12-05T11:32:18","modified_gmt":"2019-12-05T06:02:18","slug":"regional-air-connectivity-plan-struggles-to-get-off-the-ground","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/regional-air-connectivity-plan-struggles-to-get-off-the-ground\/","title":{"rendered":"Regional air connectivity plan struggles to get off the ground"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Mumbai: When India launched an ambitious programme in 2016 to connect dusty towns and villages through a network of airports dating back to World War 2, the common man let his dreams of travelling in an aircraft take flight. However, those hopes are now sputtering with airlines avoiding most routes under the Regional Connectivity Scheme (RCS), daunted by creaking infrastructure and low demand.<\/p>\n<p>Only about a third of the 232 routes connecting 137 cities that were awarded are operational. However, despite the lack of interest by airlines, the government has launched the fourth round of bidding under the RCS this week.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe move is likely to witness limited appetite, not only because of poor infrastructure, including landing systems, but also challenging terrain such as hilly areas,&#8221; said a top airline executive on the condition of anonymity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mumbai: When India launched an ambitious programme in 2016 to connect dusty towns and villages through a network of airports dating back to World War 2, the common man let his dreams of travelling in an aircraft take flight. However, those hopes are now sputtering with airlines avoiding most routes under the Regional Connectivity Scheme (RCS), daunted by creaking infrastructure and low demand. Only about a third of the 232 routes connecting 137 cities that were awarded are operational. However, despite the lack of interest by airlines, the government has launched the fourth round of bidding under the RCS this [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[188,139,130],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-304230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-civil-aviation-live-mint","category-live-mint","category-newspapers"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=304230"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304230\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=304230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=304230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=304230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}