Five seaplane services are set to begin in Gujarat. The first of them interfacing Sabarmati River in Ahmedabad to the Statue of Unity in Kevadia in the Narmada district will be inaugurated on October 31.

The Seaplane is structured as a fixed-winged plane planned for taking off and landing on water. It offers the people using it with the speed of a plane with the utility of a boat. The seaplane venture  is a part of an order of the Union Ministry of Civil Aviation and as per the order, the Airports Authority of India (AAI) has requested state governments of Gujarat, Assam, Andhra Pradesh, and Telangana and the UT administration of Andaman & Nicobar to propose potential areas for setting up water aerodromes to boost the tourism sector.

In Kevadia, the proposed Terminal will be spread over 0.51 acres within the premises of the Sardar Sarovar Narmada Nigam Ltd., located within the Panchmuli lake (Dyke 3) of the Sardar Sarovar Dam at Limdi village. It is approximately 90 km from Vadodara, 150 km from Surat and 200 km from Ahmedabad with an aerial distance of 74.6km from Vadodara airport. The Terminal Building will have a plinth region of 340 m and will be equipped with an arrangement of all cutting-edge amenities, including two check-in counters, one ticketing, facilitation and other arrangements. Around 200 travelers are expected to arrive daily to the services site as per estimation under the proposal.

Flying boats (regularly called hull seaplanes) and Floatplanes are the two primary types of seaplanes. The foot of a flying boat’s fuselage is its fundamental landing gear. It can be ordinarily supplemented with smaller drifts close to the wingtips, called wing or tip floats. The hull of a flying boat holds the crew, passengers, and cargo. The seaplane hull has many features in common with the hull of a ship or a boat. As seaplane does not require any construction of a runway, rubber buoys have been lined up to indicate the landing path for the seaplane on the water bodies.

The year 2010 saw the first-ever commercial seaplane service being launched in India under the name Jal Hans. The service was jointly operated by Pawan Hans, the public sector helicopter service provider and the administration of the UT of Andaman & Nicobar Islands. It was inaugurated on December 30, 2010 by Praful Patel, who was the then civil aviation minister.

Another governmental initiative to launch seaplane service in India was launched by Kerala in June 2013, when a seaplane service was promoted by Kerala Tourism Infrastructure Ltd was announced to connect the state’s waterways. The project however failed to commence owing to protests by the local fishing communities.

India has approximately 14,500 km length of navigable waterways. Presenting seaplane travel could be the right step with the vision of expanding India’s transportation framework.

Authorities say that SpiceJet will operate a 19-seater plane, which would be able to accommodate 14 travelers. SpiceJet has been conducting trials with diverse models of seaplanes in Mumbai for over a year now. Two seaplanes have as of now have arrived in Mumbai from where they will be brought to Sabarmati Stream in Ahmedabad for the October 31 launch.

Countries like Philippines, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Sri Lanka, Fiji, Hongkong United Arab Emirates, Italy, Maldives Finland, the United Kingdom, and the United States have operational seaplane services being run by multiple airline carriers.

The author is a student member of Amity Centre of Happiness.