Air transport

Detail

Why air transport matters in India

• Air transport is the fastest and most comfortable mode of transport.
• It suits India well. India is a vast country with very different landforms and climates.
• An aircraft flies over obstacles that slow down or block surface transport:

• mountains (Himalaya), deserts (Thar), thick forests and seas (Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Lakshadweep).

• It has drawbacks too. Fares are high and aircraft carry only a small load, so most freight still moves by rail, road and sea.

Why the North-East prefers air transport

• Air transport is the preferred mode in the North-East. Five physical barriers make roads and railways slow, costly or easily broken:
• Big rivers: the Brahmaputra and its tributaries are wide, and the region has few bridges.
• Broken relief: steep, cut-up hills (dissected relief) make roads long and winding.
• Dense forests: these raise the cost of building and repairing roads and tracks.
• Floods: yearly floods in the Brahmaputra valley cut roads and rail lines.

• International borders: Bhutan, China, Myanmar and Bangladesh nearly surround the region. Land links to the rest of India pass only through the narrow Siliguri Corridor in West Bengal.

• Result: an aircraft or helicopter can cover in about an hour what takes a full day or more by road.

• UDAN routes now serve remote, hilly and island places such as Tezpur (Assam), Pasighat (Arunachal Pradesh), Pithoragarh (Uttarakhand), Diu and Rourkela (Odisha) (2026) [2].

History: from airmail to a mass market

• 1911: air transport in India started with an airmail flight. It covered only 10 km, between Prayagraj (Allahabad) and Naini in Uttar Pradesh, across the Yamuna.
• After Independence (1947): air transport grew in a real way only after this.
• Airports Authority of India (AAI), 1995: provides air traffic services (guiding aircraft safely through the sky) and aeronautical communication services (radio and navigation links between pilots and the ground) over Indian airspace.
• Growth of airports: operational airports rose from 74 in 2014 to 165 on 15 July 2026 [2]. The government aims for 350–400 airports by 2047 [5].
• Passengers: Indian airports handled 37.6 crore passengers in FY 2023-24, 15% more than the year before [5].
• Market size: India is the third-largest domestic aviation market in the world (2026) [2][5].

Pawan Hans: helicopter services

• Pawan Hans is the government's helicopter company. It flies:
• to ONGC offshore oil rigs, for example at Mumbai High in the Arabian Sea, west of Mumbai;
• to places that are hard to reach, such as the North-Eastern states and the interior of Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand;

• for tourists, for example on pilgrimage and hill routes.

• Under Modified UDAN (2026), Pawan Hans is to get two HAL Dhruv helicopters. These are made in India by Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd (HAL) and built for difficult terrain [2].

Air India: from private to public and back

Year	Event
1932	Started as Tata Airlines
1953	Nationalised (taken over by the government)
January 2022	Sold back to the Tata group (privatisation)

• Air India is a common exam example of disinvestment, which means the government selling its share in a public company.

UDAN: Regional Connectivity Scheme

• UDAN stands for Ude Desh ka Aam Nagrik ("let the common citizen of the country fly"). It is the Regional Connectivity Scheme (RCS), launched in October 2016 [2]. The first flight under it flew in 2017.
• Aim: cheap flights to underserved airports (airports with very few flights) and unserved airports (airports with no flights). Before UDAN, air travel was mostly limited to a few big cities [2].
• Viability Gap Funding (VGF): a government subsidy that pays the gap between what a flight costs to run and what its tickets earn. It makes a loss-making regional route worth flying. Airlines also get other incentives, such as exclusive rights to fly a route for a few years.
• Results (as of 15 July 2026): [2]
• 679 routes connect 95 airports, heliports and water aerodromes. (A water aerodrome is a landing place on water for seaplanes.) In late 2025 the figures were about 650 routes and 93 aerodromes.
• More than 3.58 lakh flights have carried over 1.68 crore passengers.

• Example: Vijayawada to Kadapa (Andhra Pradesh) took 8–10 hours by road. It now takes about 1 hour by air.

• Main problem: routes stop after the subsidy ends.

• Small towns have few passengers, while fuel and running costs are high.
• When VGF and route exclusivity end, many airlines find the route loses money.
• So they stop flying it, and some new airports are left with no flights.

Modified UDAN (2026): the ten-year extension

• Modified UDAN was launched on 4 July 2026. It runs for 10 years, FY 2026-27 to FY 2035-36, with a total outlay of ₹28,840 crore [2].

Part of the scheme	What it does	Outlay
Development of aerodromes	Turns 100 unused airstrips into airports over 8 years	₹12,159 crore
Operation and Maintenance (O&M) support	Pays running costs for 3 years: up to ₹3.06 crore a year per airport and ₹0.90 crore a year per heliport or water aerodrome; covers about 441 aerodromes	₹2,577 crore
Modern helipads	200 helipads (about ₹15 crore each) in hard-to-reach regions	₹3,661 crore
VGF for airlines	Support for up to 5 years, reduced step by step from year 3; route exclusivity only for 3 years	₹10,043 crore
Atmanirbhar Bharat	2 HAL Dhruv helicopters for Pawan Hans; 2 HAL Dornier aircraft for Alliance Air	—

[2]

• Why the design changed: the old scheme mostly paid airlines to fly. The new one also pays for airports, running costs and helipads. This targets the "routes stop after the subsidy ends" problem from both sides [2].

New greenfield airports

• A greenfield airport is built on new, empty land, not by expanding an old airport.

Feature	Navi Mumbai International Airport (NMIA)	Noida International Airport (NIA)
Location	Ulwe, near Panvel, Raigad district, Maharashtra	Jewar, Gautam Buddha Nagar district, Uttar Pradesh
Developer	Adani group with CIDCO (City and Industrial Development Corporation of Maharashtra), a Public–Private Partnership (PPP): government and private company build it together [3]	Built as a PPP
Inaugurated	8 October 2025 [3]	Phase I on 28 March 2026 [4]
Phase I cost	About ₹19,650 crore [3]	About ₹11,200 crore [4]
Size and capacity	Area of 1,160 ha; final capacity 90 million passengers a year and 3.25 million tonnes of cargo [3]	—
Role	Takes load off Mumbai's crowded Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport. India's largest greenfield airport project [3]	Second big airport for the Delhi NCR, easing pressure on Delhi's Indira Gandhi International Airport [4]

• Airport privatisation and the PPP model are mainly studied under economy (GS-III infrastructure).

Prelims Hooks

• India's first air service (1911) was airmail over 10 km between Prayagraj and Naini. It was not a passenger flight.
• The Airports Authority of India was set up in 1995. It provides air traffic and aeronautical communication services.
• Pawan Hans flies helicopters, including to ONGC offshore rigs (Mumbai High). It is not a fixed-wing airline.
• Air India: Tata Airlines (1932) → nationalised (1953) → back to Tata (January 2022).
• UDAN = Ude Desh ka Aam Nagrik. It was launched in October 2016 and its main financial tool is Viability Gap Funding.
• UDAN on 15 July 2026: 679 routes, 95 airports, heliports and water aerodromes, 1.68 crore passengers [2].
• Modified UDAN: FY 2026-27 to 2035-36, ₹28,840 crore, 100 new airports and 200 helipads [2].
• Navi Mumbai International Airport is at Ulwe near Panvel, Maharashtra (opened 8 October 2025). Noida International Airport is at Jewar, Uttar Pradesh (Phase I opened 28 March 2026) [3][4].
• Operational airports: 74 (2014) → 165 (July 2026) [2].
• Trap: Navi Mumbai is not in Mumbai city district. Jewar is in Uttar Pradesh, not Delhi or Haryana.

Mains Points

• Geography drives demand for air transport: in the North-East, Himalayan states and island territories, big rivers, steep relief, forests, floods and border location make surface transport slow and unreliable. Air and helicopter links (Pawan Hans, UDAN heliports) bring strategic, medical and tourism access (GS-I, GS-III).
• Regional connectivity versus commercial viability: UDAN brought 95 aerodromes and 679 routes into the network (2026). But many routes stop once VGF ends. Modified UDAN (2026) responds with O&M support, tapering VGF, new airports and helipads, and Indian-made aircraft [2].
• Congestion and the PPP model: greenfield airports at Navi Mumbai and Jewar ease crowded metro airports. They show the move from government-run airports (AAI) to PPP and privatisation, as also seen in Air India's return to Tata in 2022 (GS-III infrastructure).
• Balanced regional development: cheaper air links to Tier-2 and Tier-3 towns help tourism, perishable trade and emergency services. This reduces the gap between metros and the hinterland [2][5].