Recently, a newly built airport in Shivamogga, Karnataka was inaugurated by the Prime minister. The Airport project is an attempt to improve connectivity and accessibility of Shivamogga and other neighboring areas in the Malnad region.

Similarly, airports in various other cities were operationalised, like the Pakyong airport in Sikkim, and the Jharsuguda Airport in Odisha. This was done under the UDAN (Ude Desh Ka Aam Nagrik) scheme which is a regional connectivity scheme launched by the central government in 2016 to enhance the aviation infrastructure and air connectivity in tier II and tier III cities. According to the Press release in August last year, the scheme aims to complete 220 airports/heliports/water aerodromes by 2026.

As per the Greenfield airport policy 2018, an airport developer, including the state governments, willing to establish an airport is required to send a proposal to the Ministry of Civil Aviation and it will have to undergo a 2-stage process -‘Site-Clearance’ stage and 'In-Principle' approval stage.

Apart from greenfield airports like the one built in Shivamogga, the scheme also covers operationalizing under-served and unserved airports along with increasing the number of routes. 68 underserved/unserved destinations which include 58 Airports, 8 Heliports & 2 Water Aerodromes have been connected under the UDAN scheme.

For the unserved and underserved airports, the airline operator needs to approach AAI (Airport authority of India) and submit an expression of interest, based on which the AAI will coordinate with the concerned agencies for extending the relevant concessions such as tax concessions, specified under the Scheme.
Recently it has also been proposed that for the smaller airports which cater to less than 3.5 million passengers annually, the central government will hike charges by 30% and increase user development fee by four times, making it expensive to fly out from such airports.

Does your city have an airport? Do you think it needs one? Find out if your state has any upcoming airport projects under this scheme here.