Centre to revive 50 airports

The civil aviation ministry plans to develop 50 low-cost airports in two years to supplement its proposed regional connectivity scheme. AAI manages 125 airports and scheduled commercial airlines operate from 75 of them. The Centre has proposed a scheme to incentivise airlines to fly on regional routes. The Union Government will provide viability-gap funding to airlines to cover the cost of operations on such routes, through a reverse bidding process, provided they charge ~2,500 per passenger for an hour's flight.