The Centre’s plan to develop four new airports in Bengal under the regional connectivity scheme UDAN has expanded the state’s aviation map, but it has also revived a more difficult question: can new airport infrastructure produce durable flight services when existing regional links have struggled to survive? The answer will depend less on the number of runways announced than on whether airlines, governments and passengers can sustain a workable regional aviation network.
Union civil aviation minister K. Rammohan Naidu said airports would be developed at Charra in Purulia, Kalaikunda in Paschim Medinipur, Balurghat in Dakshin Dinajpur and Hasimara in Alipurduar over the next two years. The Centre plans to spend Rs 29,000 crore on UDAN in Bengal over the next decade, according to the report, which said the state government and the civil aviation ministry had signed an agreement for implementing the scheme.
The announcement also includes a larger aviation ambition for the state. Naidu said the Centre wanted Kolkata to have a second airport to meet growing demand. Chief minister Suvendu Adhikari said Bengal was ready to provide land for airport expansion and had identified 2,000 acres at Kalyani for a new airport near Kolkata. He also sought direct flights from Kolkata to the UK and other European destinations, along with more services from Andal airport in Durgapur.
But Bengal’s existing regional airports show why construction and connectivity cannot be treated as the same outcome. Cooch Behar airport, which resumed operations under UDAN in 2023, currently has no regular flight service. IndiaOne Air operated a nine-seater service from February 21, 2023, under a three-year UDAN agreement, but that service ended this year.
The airport’s physical limitations are part of the problem. Its runway is 1,059 metres long, and the airport had previously been restricted to nine-seater aircraft. The state government has allocated Rs 10 crore in this year’s budget for expansion, raising the possibility that a longer runway and upgraded infrastructure could allow larger aircraft and help restore regular commercial connectivity. That, however, remains an implementation objective rather than an operating service.
Malda presents a different version of the same problem. The state government has constructed a runway and officials from the Airports Authority of India have visited the site repeatedly, but regular commercial flights have not materialised. A small-aircraft service was promised, while helicopter services operated briefly before being discontinued. The airport area is now largely unused, with residents reportedly using the premises for morning and evening walks and cattle grazing along the sidewalks.
These examples expose the institutional gap between providing an airport asset and creating a viable route. A runway can be built through public expenditure and land can be allocated through government action. Regular flights require a continuing operating decision by airlines, aircraft availability, passenger demand and, under a subsidy-based regional connectivity model, a funding structure that can support the route when traffic is uncertain.
UDAN was launched on October 21, 2016, with the stated objective of making air travel accessible to ordinary citizens. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s formulation at the time was that a common person who travelled in slippers should also be seen in an aircraft. The scheme’s political and planning promise was therefore not only to build airports, but to connect underserved cities to the wider transport network at affordable fares.
The available figures suggest that operational continuity has been a persistent challenge. The Telegraph Online had earlier reported that the scheme had incurred expenditure of Rs 4,071 crore up to August 2024. Of 870 valid routes awarded under the scheme, 579 had been operationalised, while airlines discontinued 106 routes in the first three years. The numbers show a substantial gap between routes awarded and routes that actually began operating, as well as between routes launched and services that continued.
The reasons for failure are not uniform. The report cited the case of SpiceJet, which was awarded routes connecting Shivamogga with Delhi, Hyderabad and Chennai but had not started operating them because of a shortage of aircraft. This is a supply-side constraint: an approved route cannot function if the airline lacks the fleet to serve it. Other cases point to demand-side weakness. Ayodhya, for example, was identified as a place where airlines later dropped flights because of insufficient demand.
Bengal’s proposed airports will therefore enter a network in which route selection, aircraft availability and passenger volumes are closely connected. A new airport in Charra, Kalaikunda, Balurghat or Hasimara may improve geographic access to air infrastructure, but the public value will ultimately be measured by dependable services rather than by the completion of construction. The distinction matters because an airport without scheduled flights offers limited mobility benefit while continuing to impose maintenance and institutional costs.
The state’s geography makes the issue particularly relevant. The proposed locations are spread across Purulia, Paschim Medinipur, Dakshin Dinajpur and Alipurduar, while the existing examples are in Cooch Behar and Malda. This suggests an effort to distribute aviation access beyond Kolkata and Durgapur. Yet the operational experience of Cooch Behar and Malda indicates that geographical distribution alone does not establish a functioning regional network.
The proposed second airport near Kolkata adds another layer to the planning challenge. Kolkata already serves as the state’s principal aviation gateway, and the Centre’s stated interest in a second airport reflects concern over future demand. The state’s identification of 2,000 acres at Kalyani provides a land-related starting point, but the supplied material does not establish a final project design, approval, funding arrangement, construction timetable or operating model for the proposed airport.
That distinction is important in infrastructure governance. Land availability can remove one barrier, but it does not settle questions about environmental permissions, airport design, airspace management, access roads, terminal capacity, financing, airline interest or the relationship between a new airport and existing facilities. Similarly, the request for direct Kolkata-Europe flights and expanded services from Andal expresses a connectivity objective, but the report does not identify confirmed carriers, routes or launch dates.
The policy landscape is consequently divided between the Centre’s UDAN framework and state-level responsibilities. The Centre, through the civil aviation ministry, is committing a long-term expenditure plan and entering into an implementation agreement with the state. The state is expected to support land and, in Cooch Behar’s case, airport expansion. Airlines remain essential to converting those public commitments into scheduled operations. The discontinuation of existing services shows that these responsibilities must work together over time, not only at the announcement stage.
The experience of other states reinforces the implementation problem without proving that every airport will follow the same path. In Tamil Nadu, five airports—Salem, Thanjavur, Ramanathapuram, Vellore and Neyveli—were identified under the scheme, but the report said only Salem had operational flights. Pakyong in Sikkim was cited as another airport that failed to take off, while Ayodhya was cited as an airport where airlines dropped services because of weak demand.
The data available in the report points to a recurring conversion problem: 870 valid routes, 579 operationalised routes, 106 discontinued routes in the scheme’s first three years and Rs 4,071 crore spent up to August 2024. These figures do not establish that UDAN has failed as a whole, but they do show that route approval and expenditure are incomplete measures of connectivity. The more demanding indicator is whether passengers can rely on services after the initial support or publicity has ended.
That is the central test for Bengal’s new airport plan. The proposed investment can widen access to aviation, support links to remote districts and reduce the distance to major urban centres. But the Cooch Behar and Malda cases demonstrate that infrastructure capacity, route subsidies and airline operations must be planned as one system. Otherwise, the state risks adding airports to a network whose weakest point is not the absence of facilities, but the absence of sustained flights.
The next stages will be determined by the development of the four proposed airports over the next two years, the implementation of the Bengal-Centre agreement, the expansion plans for Cooch Behar and the progress of the Kalyani proposal. NITI Aayog has already called for proposals to evaluate UDAN’s relevance and assess whether it has improved regional connectivity and made air travel economical. Those evaluations, along with actual flight schedules and route continuity, will provide the clearest measure of whether Bengal’s aviation expansion becomes a durable mobility network or another cycle of infrastructure announcements followed by grounded services.
