India’s Domestic Aviation Policy – UDAN Delivers

It’s a wonderful idea, to create an aviation objective of “letting the common citizen of the country fly” and could be applied to many markets around the world. India’s UDAN (Ude Desh Ka Aam Naagrik) programme launched in 2016 has now been in operation for three years. With a general election currently underway, we thought it would be an ideal time to review the success of what was a central element of the previous Government’s election promises.

UDAN had a number of objectives ranging from airport development and enhanced regional connectivity within India through to economic development and of course improving access to air travel for everyone.  In such a large country and in a relatively short period of time, how successful has the programme been and what are the key results?

Before we answer that question, it is worth noting that in the last four years, India’s aviation market has been one of the fastest changing in the world; both in terms of growth but also perhaps more recently in the supply dynamics. Some airlines have flourished whilst others failed and of course, Air India remains a complex challenge with no solution.

Purely from a growth perspective, the table below suggests that the UDAN initiative has delivered spectacular levels of growth across the Indian domestic market. In summary, there are now 340,000 additional scheduled flights compared to 2015; the equivalent of an extra 930 services a day. Those additional services are providing around 15,100 extra seats a day which would certainly support the desire to increase air access for all. Perhaps the most important element is that compared to five years ago, 860 airport pairs are now being operated which would appear to play well to the ambition of increasing connectivity.

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