How UDAN 2.0 plans to get India's regional aviation dreams past the turbulence - explained

When the government launched the UDAN scheme in 2016, it carried a simple but ambitious promise: make flying affordable enough for even a person wearing hawai chappals to board a hawai jahaz.Nearly a decade later, that vision has reshaped India’s aviation map.Small airports that had remained unused for years were revived. Towns that had never seen scheduled commercial flights were connected to larger cities. Regional air travel moved beyond metros and became part of India’s broader infrastructure expansion story.Under UDAN, more than 1.66 crore passengers have travelled across 669 operational routes connecting 95 airports, heliports and water aerodromes.The scheme has also helped expand aviation access to remote, hilly and underserved regions where commercial airlines had earlier found operations difficult.But the journey has not been without turbulence.While hundreds of routes were launched, many struggled to survive after initial government support ended.