Air Deccan (DKN, Nashik) has been ordered by the Indian Ministry of State for Civil Aviation to launch its planned Kolkata-Jamshedpur service by February 15, 2018, or otherwise it will be stripped of its traffic rights for this route, the Times of India has reported.

If Air Deccan fails to meet the deadline, the ministry will transfer the route authority to another operator.

The Indian LCC, a new iteration of Air Deccan (2003) which had been the largest Indian LCC before a takeover by Kingfisher Red (Bengaluru International) in 2008, has been awarded the Kolkata-Jamshedpur authority under the UDAN scheme. The scheme is an Indian government's initiative aiming to subsidise services to unserved or underserved airports around the country.

Under the terms of the route authority, Air Deccan was supposed to launch the service by September 30, 2017. However, the carrier only received its air operator's certificate (AOC) at the end of the year and launched its first routes at the end of December. It currently serves Mumbai International, Nashik, Jalgaon, and Pune.

Jamshedpur, a city of over 1.3 million inhabitants in the eastern Indian state of Jharkhand, currently does not see any scheduled air traffic.