Total Number of Airports Built Under Modi: Before vs After Data

Airport infrastructure is one of the more visibly measurable areas of change since 2014. This article compiles the before-and-after data, along with the regional connectivity scheme built specifically to make flying more accessible outside India’s major metro cities.

The Headline Numbers

India had 74 operational airports when Modi’s government took office in 2014, according to figures cited by the Press Information Bureau and reported by The Hans India in a piece titled “Wings of change: India’s airport boom from 74 to 157 in a decade.” More recent government statements put the current count somewhere between 157 and 162 operational airports, heliports, and water aerodromes, according to statements from the Civil Aviation Ministry reported by All India Radio’s news service, with the exact figure shifting slightly depending on when a particular count was taken, since new facilities have continued opening.

The UDAN Scheme

Much of this expansion connects directly to the Ude Desh ka Aam Naagrik scheme, or UDAN, meaning “let the common citizen fly,” launched on October 21, 2016, aimed at making regional air travel affordable and connecting smaller cities that previously had little or no commercial air service. As of April 2025, the scheme had connected 625 routes across 90 airports, heliports, and water aerodromes, according to a government fact sheet reported by Organiser and corroborated by a Press Information Bureau document. The scheme works through subsidised fares on regional routes, funded partly through Viability Gap Funding paid to airlines to make otherwise unprofitable regional routes commercially viable.

Major New Airports

Beyond the UDAN network’s smaller regional airports, two large new airports have been a particular focus of recent construction. Navi Mumbai International Airport was inaugurated by Modi on October 8, 2025, at a reported cost of Rs 19,650 crore, with commercial operations beginning December 25, 2025, according to a Press Information Bureau release and coverage by The Tribune. Noida International Airport at Jewar, planned as one of Asia’s largest airports, faced a series of rollout delays through 2025, with various reports citing different target dates for full operations, reflecting the genuinely complex, multi-year timelines involved in building large greenfield airports from scratch.

The Criticism

UDAN’s rollout has not been without documented problems. A Comptroller and Auditor General report found that only 52 percent of routes awarded under the scheme had actually commenced operations, according to reporting by Moneylife, a gap Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge specifically cited, telling reporters, according to Tribune India’s coverage, that the CAG report showed the scheme “didn’t work on 93 per cent” of routes by a separate measure the Congress leader cited. Independent policy analysis site Factly.in also documented specific gaps in how viability gap funding was disbursed and how sustainably individual routes operated once subsidies were reduced or withdrawn over time.

Why the Route-Level Numbers Matter More Than the Airport Count Alone

It’s worth being precise about what the airport count captures and what it doesn’t. A rising count of operational airports doesn’t automatically mean all of them see regular commercial traffic, since some UDAN-linked airports have seen routes launched and later discontinued when passenger demand fell short of what was needed to sustain the route even with subsidies, a distinction the CAG’s findings on route completion specifically highlight. The airport-count figure is a genuine, verifiable infrastructure achievement, but reading it alongside the route-completion data gives a fuller picture of how much of that new capacity is actually being used day to day.

What’s Planned Next

The Union Budget 2025 announced an expanded phase of the scheme, sometimes referred to informally as UDAN 2.0, targeting connectivity to 120 new destinations over the following decade, according to coverage of the budget announcement, suggesting the government views the regional connectivity push as a continuing, multi-year priority rather than a completed initiative.

How Fares Are Kept Affordable

The core mechanism behind UDAN’s affordability is a fare cap on shorter regional routes, historically set at roughly Rs 2,500 for a one-hour flight, with the gap between what airlines can profitably charge and this capped fare covered through Viability Gap Funding, a subsidy jointly funded by the central government and the relevant state government, according to explanations of the scheme’s mechanics published by ClearTax and Drishti IAS. This structure is specifically designed to make routes that wouldn’t otherwise attract commercial airline interest financially workable, at least for the subsidy period, rather than relying purely on organic market demand from smaller cities to sustain new routes on their own.

The Airport Infrastructure Behind the Route Numbers

Not every UDAN-linked facility is a full-scale commercial airport. The network includes a mix of airports, heliports for helicopter services in hard-to-reach terrain such as hill states, and water aerodromes for seaplane operations, a broader definition of “connected” than airport counts alone might suggest, meaning the growth from 74 to over 150 airports specifically, separate from the wider 90-plus UDAN network figure, represents the more conservative, narrowly defined measure of new full airport infrastructure.

Bottom Line

India’s operational airport count has grown from 74 in 2014 to somewhere in the range of 157 to 162 today, driven substantially by the UDAN regional connectivity scheme launched in 2016, though a CAG audit found only about half of the routes awarded under that scheme have actually commenced operations, a gap worth weighing alongside the headline airport-count growth.

FAQ

Abhyudaya Verma