Data check: Does India really need one airport every 50 days?
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Civil aviation minister K. Ram Mohan Naidu often highlights India’s rapid pace of airport creation—one new airport every 45–50 days.
The claim checks out. Official data show India added 89 airports over the past 11 years. The bigger question, however, is whether this expansion is sustainable.
A Mint analysis of 78 airports built, upgraded or connected since 2017 shows that nearly 60% recorded fewer than 10,000 domestic passenger footfalls a month on average in 2025. Aircraft movement was also thin, with close to the same proportion seeing fewer than five domestic flights a day. By comparison, the median Indian airport handles about 24,000 passengers a month and around seven aircraft movements daily.
This is not to say that all expansions have been underwhelming: Rajkot (Hirasar), Prayagraj and Ayodhya clocked in nearly a million passenger footfalls until November in 2025, signalling the immense potential many of these hubs may hold. However, there were also at least 15 airports and 123 routes that have been discontinued under the government's Udan (Ude Desh ka Aam Nagrik) scheme—roughly accounting for a fifth of the total. The reasons for the failure of many airports and routes are several, including a lack of demand in many Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities and a shortage of airline resources to complement the airport infrastructure.
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