Govt to soon launch national helicopter medical emergency plan: Jyotiraditya M Scindia

New Delhi: Jyotiraditya M Scindia, Minister for Civil Aviation and Steel, has announced three new projects for enhancing the helicopter sector in the country which includes Project Akash, HEMS and fractional ownership.

The Minister launched a new Helicopter Emergency Medical Services (HEMS) under project ‘Sanjeevani’ and the service will start at AIIMS, Rishikesh. “Through the learnings from project ‘Sanjeevani’, we will put in place a National Helicopter Medical Emergency plan in the days to come,” he added.

Addressing the ‘4^th Heli-India Summit 2022 – Helicopters for Last Mile Connectivity’, organized by FICCI, jointly with the Ministry of Civil Aviation, Govt of India and Govt of J&K, Mr Scindia said that the government intends to expand medical outreach and access to trauma care services to a wider population across the country using helicopters.

Scindia also announced project – ‘Akash’ to enhance the safety in helicopter operations and provide all-weather day and night access. The government has started to develop helicopter specific low level IFR route using GAGAN under the project Akash. “This will greatly benefit the helicopters and small aircraft operations to non-IFR airfields and helipads,” he added.

Speaking on the airspace corridor, Scindia said that the government has already set-up 3 dedicated helicopter corridor in the country. “We will create additional helicopter corridors where there is greater congestion to provide new areas for these sectors to grow,” he added.

The Minister highlighted that our scheduled operations by carriers are increasing in the country, and we also need to promote non-scheduled operators (NSOPs). “We have introduced a new concept of ‘fractional ownership’ concept in the country today,” he said and added that this will help in owning the flying time of an aircraft by a large pool of people rather than buying the plane. “Democratization of owning an aircraft will start with the concept of fractional ownership,” asserted Scindia.

Helicopters, he said have multifarious role by providing urban connectivity and the government has started providing helicopter connectivity between airports and cities at economical rates. Helicopters also have important role in providing medical services along with disaster management. In last one year, the government has introduced ‘Heli Sewa’ portal for providing all permissions to operators there by providing Ease of Doing Business. We also have introduced Heli-Disha to set up more helipads, one helipad in one district, he added. “The government has also removed all landing and parking charges for helicopters to boost the sector,” he added.

Speaking on the future of Indian Civil Aviation market, Scindia said that civil aviation across the world today forms a very important cog of the wheel of economic development. In 2014, India had 74 airports and in last 8 years, we have added 67 new airports, water aerodromes and heliports. “In the next 5 years, we will go from current 141 airports to 200 airports in the country,” he emphasized.