Ude Desh ka Aam Naagrik (Hindi for "Let the common citizens of the country fly"), known by its acronym UDAN (Hindi for "flight") is a regional airport development program of the Government of India and part of the Regional Connectivity Scheme (RCS) of upgrading under-serviced air routes. Its goal is to make air travel affordable and improve economic development in India. At the beginning of the scheme, out of a total of 486 airports, 406 were under-serviced and only 27 were well-served; out of 97 non-RCS airports only 12 were operational. The UDAN scheme was created to add to this number by expediting the development and operationalization of India's potential target of nearly 425 unserved, under-served, and mostly underdeveloped regional airports with regularly scheduled flights. However, several issues and criticisms of its poor infrastructure, dominance by larger airlines, degradation of regional airlines, and slow implementation have plagued the scheme. In October 2023, India has 149 operational airports for civil aviation, including 30 international, 12 customs, 107 domestic, and few more civil aviation enclaves within military air bases. India is also planning to build the second airports in the big cities to decongest, 6 by 2030, 15 by 2040 and 30 plus by 2047.
UDAN-RCS is both an enabler and a beneficiary of other key Government of India schemes, such as Bharatmala, Sagarmala, Dedicated Freight Corridors, Industrial corridor, BharatNet, Digital India and Make in India, National e-Governance Plan, Startup India and Standup India.
Phases
UDAN 1.0: 36 new airports were commissioned. 128 flight routes for 70 airports were awarded to 5 airline companies.
UDAN 2.0: A helipad was added for the first time. In 2018, 73 unserved airports were announced.
UDAN 3.0: Several changes were made, including tourist routes, seaplanes to connect water aerodromes, and routes under 'UDAN' in the North-East region.
UDAN 4.0: 78 new routes were approved in 2020. In this phase, the Kavaratti, Agatti, and Minicoy islands of Lakshadweep will also be connected by new routes.
UDAN 4.1: This phase is focused on connecting small airports, special helicopter, and seaplane routes under UDAN. New ways have also been proposed under Sagarmala seaplane services.
Details
The UDAN Scheme is a key component of the Prime Minister Narendra Modi's National Civil Aviation Policy (NCAP) which was released by the Ministry of Civil Aviation (India) on 15 June 2016. The scheme will be jointly funded by the central government and state governments. Several states have come on board by signing the "Memorandum of Understanding" with the union government for this scheme. UDAN RCS will connect an unspecified number of new regional routes by operationalizing 100 regional airports by the end of the 2018-2019 financial year, with a target of 13 lacks (1.3 million) annual passenger seats. It will require crore (2 billion rupees) in viability gap funding (VGF) annually. Qualifying routes must have three to seven flights per week from the same airport.
The scheme has two components. The first component is to develop new airports and enhance the existing regional airports to increase the number of operational airports for scheduled civilian flights from 70 (in May 2016, a total 98 operational including army airports) to at least 150 airports (by December 2018) with regularly scheduled flights. Initially, more than 100 underserved (no more than 7 scheduled flights per week) and unserved regional airports will be developed by December 2018, for which the initial funding of for the enhancement of 50 regional airports was approved in May 2017. Out of the total 70 airports included in round I, 43 are regional airports to be newly operationalized. RCS-Udan operations have commenced from 13 regional airports and additional 12 regional airports are ready to receive flights. 18 regional airports still require significant upgrades (November 2017). The second component is to add several hundred financially viable, capped-airfare, new regional flight routes to connect more than 100 underserved and unserved airports in smaller towns with each other as well as with well-served airports in bigger cities by using "Viability Gap Funding" (VGF) where needed. Initially, three separate rounds of bidding for the award of routes will be concluded by the end of 2018. Union government's share of "Viability Gap Funding" is from the cess applied to flights to popular routes to main cities and respective state governments have also offered additional benefits to the flight operators to make UDAN-RCS viable.