Aerodrome infra for seaplanes to be ready in 6 to 8 months, says government

A seaplane takes off from the Amanwana resort on Moyo island in eastern Indonesia September 20, 2012. The seaplane taxiing over a coral reef to deliver tourists to a remote luxury resort may soon become a more familiar sight in Indonesia, an archipelago of 17,000 islands and only 183 airports. At the moment, seaplanes in Indonesia are limited to niche charter flights for high-end tourism and mining, but their use could spread to serve the needs of a fast-growing economy and to beat the lack of transport infrastructure. Picture taken September 20,2012. REUTERS/Neil Chatterjee (INDONESIA - Tags: TRANSPORT BUSINESS TRAVEL) - GM1E8A90DKC01

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In about six months' time, travelling to Statue of Unity and Nagarjuna Sagar would be possible via seaplane as the Centre has approved six aerodromes across India under the third phase of UDAN, it's regional connectivity scheme.

Announcing the routes on January 25, the Ministry of Civil Aviation revealed six water aerodrome sights suitable for seaplanes. These include Guwahati River Front, Nagarjuna Sagar, Sabarmati River Front, Shatrunjay Dam, Statue of Unity and Umrangso Reservoir.

"Waterdromes are the beginning of newer ways of flying... For places where there was no place to build airports (due to lack of availability of land), we can now land of water," Union Minister for Civil Aviation, Suresh Prabhu, said.

The Centre had proposed a total of 13 sights to build waterdromes, of which only six could be awarded.

The other areas have been kept aside for consideration and "are at documentation stage", another senior official from the aviation ministry told Moneycontrol. These sights are Tehri Dam (Uttarakhand), Erai Dam (Maharashtra) and Khindsi Dam (Maharashtra).

"If these sights are considered suitable at a later stage, we will award them as well," the official said.

The infrastructure for aerodromes, according to the government, will be ready in six to eight months.

"The infrastructure for all the waterdromes, under the RCS scheme, will be provided by the Airports Authority of India (AAI)," said Aviation Secretary, R N Choubey adding, "we expect that between six to eight months time, we will be in a position to make it functional".

The government has also planned to put on hold the usage of seaplanes within the Andaman and Nicobar Islands as was anticipated previously.
The government had earlier decided to fly seaplanes between Havelock, Long Island, Neil Island and Hutbay Island in Andaman and Car Nicobar in Nicobar. However, the final routes awarded on January 25 have revealed that all these places will have fixed wing airports and no aerodromes.

The inter-connectivity between Andaman and Nicobar Islands will be as follows: Campbell airport will be connected to Car Nicobar, Car Nicobar will be connected to Campbell and Portblair, Portblair will be connected to Shibpur and Car Nicobar and Shibpur will be connected to Portblair.

While all the interconnected flights within Andaman and Nicobar Islands will be operated by Andaman Airlines, the seaplanes will be operated by SpiceJet and Turbo Aviation.

The cost of funding waterdromes under RCS scheme would be Rs 17 crore annually, which will increase seat capacity up to 1.18 lakh.