Airports · India · since 2017
Which of India’s new airports took off?
Since 2017, 67 airports across India have gained or regained passenger flights, most of them under UDAN. The traffic went to a few: Goa’s Mopa and Navi Mumbai handled 49% of all their passengers over the last year. The 33 quietest together handle just 639 passengers a day, and at 12 the flights have all but stopped.
- How UDAN worksUDAN subsidises airlines to fly selected routes to smaller towns for three years, with about half the seats on each flight offered at capped fares. It has also invested ₹4,164 crore in airports, heliports and water aerodromes.
- Why flights stopAs of July 2026, 348 of the 679 UDAN routes ever started were still running. Another 165 had stopped even before their three subsidised years were up.
- And now, Modified UDANLaunched in July 2026: ₹28,840 crore over ten years for airline subsidies of up to five years, airport running costs, 100 existing unserved airstrips upgraded into airports, and 200 heliports.
Passengers are domestic, counting arrivals and departures. Flights are estimated from AAI’s domestic aircraft movements (half of take-offs and landings) and can include charters, not only scheduled flights. Both are daily averages over September 2025 to August 2026, or since flights began. A year counts only the months after an airport opened, and is grounded if it averaged under one flight a week. 2026 is January to August only. Hover a plane for that year’s flights.
The data +
All 67 airports, busiest first. Latest twelve months (September 2025 to August 2026). Of the 12 with almost no flights, 10 had ₹529 crore invested in them under UDAN: Datia 66, Aligarh 32, Azamgarh 30, Chitrakoot 33, Kushinagar 108, Ludhiana (old) 13, Moradabad 30, Pakyong 179, Pathankot 5, Shravasti 33. The other two, Kota and Ziro, are not on the government’s list.
| Airport | Code | Domestic passengers a day | Flights a day | Invested under UDAN, ₹ crore | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Goa | GOX | 13,132 | 47 | – | Regular |
| Navi Mumbai | NMI | 12,024 | 46 | – | Regular |
| Hindon | HDO | 2,424 | 10 | 46.60 | Regular |
| Darbhanga | DBR | 2,134 | 6.6 | 127.82 | Regular |
| Ayodhya | AYJ | 2,110 | 6.5 | 347.41 | Regular |
| Noida | DXN | 1,995 | 15 | – | Regular |
| Shirdi | SAG | 1,555 | 5.2 | – | Regular |
| Kannur | CNN | 1,226 | 6.6 | 0.00 | Regular |
| Jharsuguda | JRG | 1,205 | 5.6 | 183.67 | Regular |
| Nashik | ISK | 1,131 | 5.5 | 11.19 | Regular |
| Deoghar | DGH | 1,019 | 3.9 | 5.19 | Regular |
| Kanpur | KNU | 975 | 3.2 | 134.79 | Regular |
| Purnea | PXN | 864 | 4.5 | 68.83 | Regular |
| Jaisalmer | JSA | 667 | 2.9 | 10.34 | Regular |
| Itanagar | HGI | 578 | 2.8 | – | Regular |
| Kolhapur | KLH | 533 | 4.7 | 333.29 | Regular |
| Shivamogga | RQY | 469 | 4.6 | 0.00 | Regular |
| Nanded | NDC | 437 | 4.9 | 0.20 | Regular |
| Jalgaon | JLG | 424 | 4.2 | 28.55 | Regular |
| Adampur | AIP | 401 | 1.9 | 125.60 | Regular |
| Salem | SXV | 361 | 3.8 | 24.44 | Regular |
| Bareilly | BEK | 351 | 1.2 | 104.14 | Regular |
| Ludhiana (Halwara) | HWR | 350 | 2 | – | Regular |
| Kishangarh | KQH | 338 | 3.4 | 29.78 | Regular |
| Sindhudurg | SDW | 286 | 2.8 | 0.00 | Regular |
| Puducherry | PNY | 278 | 2.2 | 31.98 | Regular |
| Mysuru | MYQ | 258 | 2.3 | 41.40 | Regular |
| Jagdalpur | JGB | 170 | 1.9 | 60.16 | Regular |
| Kadapa | CDP | 169 | 2.1 | 99.36 | Regular |
| Bikaner | BKB | 135 | 1.3 | 15.98 | Regular |
| Rewa | REW | 121 | 2 | 102.10 | Regular |
| Solapur | SSE | 98 | 1.3 | 70.89 | Regular |
| Bidar | IXX | 71 | 0.9 | 12.29 | Regular |
| Bilaspur | PAB | 68 | 1.1 | 65.22 | Regular |
| Vijayanagar | VDY | 65 | 1.4 | 5.99 | Regular |
| Gondia | GDB | 64 | 0.9 | 47.21 | Thinning |
| Kandla | IXY | 58 | 0.5 | 28.12 | Thinning |
| Kurnool | KJB | 52 | 1.5 | 0.03 | Regular |
| Tezu | TEI | 51 | 0.8 | 89.65 | Regular |
| Pithoragarh | NNS | 49 | 4.9 | 9.36 | Regular |
| Amravati | AVR | 49 | 0.6 | 148.53 | Regular |
| Jeypore | PYB | 36 | 2.8 | 59.13 | Regular |
| Bathinda | BUP | 33 | 0.6 | 3.04 | Regular |
| Kalaburagi | GBI | 30 | 0.4 | 28.64 | Regular; paused list, Dec 2025 |
| Rupsi | RUP | 29 | 0.4 | 88.79 | Regular |
| Hisar | HSS | 24 | 0.8 | 29.21 | Regular |
| Daman | NMB | 17 | 0.4 | – | Regular |
| Pasighat | IXT | 15 | 0.4 | 0.07 | Thinning |
| Utkela | UKE | 13 | 1.5 | 56.03 | Regular |
| Keshod | IXK | 13 | 0.6 | 32.71 | Regular |
| Jamshedpur | IXW | 12 | 1.3 | 0.00 | Regular |
| Shimla | SLV | 9 | 0.4 | 116.70 | Regular; paused list, Dec 2025 |
| Ambikapur | AHA | 9 | 0.3 | 80.14 | Regular; paused list, Dec 2025 |
| Cooch Behar | COH | 5 | 0.4 | 11.00 | Thinning |
| Rourkela | RRK | 4 | 0.7 | 58.96 | Regular; paused list, Dec 2025 |
| Kota | KTU | 1 | 0.1 | – | Almost no flights |
| Ziro | ZER | 1 | 0.1 | – | Almost no flights |
| Datia | DTA | 0 | 0.1 | 66.40 | Almost no flights; paused list, Dec 2025 |
| Aligarh | HRH | 0 | <0.1 | 31.94 | Almost no flights; paused list, Dec 2025 |
| Azamgarh | AZH | 0 | none | 29.57 | No flights in the last year; paused list, Dec 2025 |
| Chitrakoot | CWK | 0 | <0.1 | 32.79 | Almost no flights; paused list, Dec 2025 |
| Kushinagar | KBK | 0 | none | 108.22 | No flights in the last year; paused list, Dec 2025 |
| Ludhiana (old) | LUH | 0 | <0.1 | 12.80 | Almost no flights; paused list, Dec 2025 |
| Moradabad | MZS | 0 | <0.1 | 30.41 | Almost no flights; paused list, Dec 2025 |
| Pakyong | PYG | 0 | none | 178.75 | No flights in the last year; paused list, Dec 2025 |
| Pathankot | IXP | 0 | none | 5.18 | No flights in the last year; paused list, Dec 2025 |
| Shravasti | VSV | 0 | none | 32.84 | No flights in the last year; paused list, Dec 2025 |
Sources and method +
Passengers and flights by airport: Airports Authority of India, monthly traffic news, Annexure III (domestic passengers) and Annexure II (domestic aircraft movements), January 2017 to August 2026. A flight is a departure: half of AAI’s take-offs and landings.
Which airports: every airport that gained or regained passenger flights since 2017, meaning it did not have regular flights (at least one a week) in January–March 2017 and has handled passengers since; city airfields used for charters are left out. 55 of them averaged at least one flight a week over the last year, the airports on the reach map; 4 of those fell below that in the latest three months.
Paused: the civil aviation ministry’s answer in the Rajya Sabha on 1 December 2025, as reported by the Tribune and Deccan Chronicle, listing 15 UDAN airports as “temporarily non-operational”; Bhavnagar, the fifteenth, began flights before 2017. It is a snapshot: the government’s later lists differ, and some of these airports still show a few flights in AAI’s figures. The coral shading follows AAI’s figures, not this list.
Money: what the government invested in developing each airport’s infrastructure under UDAN (not airline subsidies or running costs), from the civil aviation ministry’s answer in the Rajya Sabha on 27 July 2026 (unstarred question 808), which lists all 95 UDAN airports, heliports and water aerodromes, ₹4,164 crore in all. A dash means the airport is not on that list. Ludhiana’s figure is for the old airport. Routes: answer of 10 August 2026 (unstarred question 2406). Modified UDAN: answer of 10 August 2026 (unstarred question 2413). Pakyong: SpiceJet stopped flying in October 2022, resumed Delhi and Kolkata flights in March 2024 and stopped again in June 2024, as AAI’s figures also show. Shimla’s runway is 1,230 metres on a hilltop plateau. Distances are straight lines to the nearest airport with over 1,000 passengers a day.