When ₹2,500 Becomes ₹7,500, The Slow Death of UDAN

l am a Manipuri who grew up believing that the sky belonged only to the rich and the powerful. Then, in October 2017, UDAN landed at Bir Tikendrajit Airport in Imphal like a miracle. A one-way ticket to Guwahati — the same 276 km that used to cost ₹8,000–₹12,000 on a good day — dropped to ₹2,530 all-inclusive.

For the first time, a cancer patient from Moreh town could reach Downtown Hospital in Guwahati without mortgaging the family small land. A student from Thoubal could attend an interview in Guwahati and be back home for dinner. Farmers could fly orchids and pineapples to Delhi before they wilted.

₹2,500 wasn’t just a fare; it was dignity on wings.Eight years later, in December 2025, that same Imphal–Guwahati ticket is ₹11,000 on the rare flight that hasn’t been cancelled. Imphal–Silchar (145 km) — another proud UDAN route launched with ribbon-cutting ceremonies and tweets from the Prime Minister’s Office — is ₹9,000 if you can find a seat.

The reason? IndiGo, which carries more than 60 % of domestic traffic, suddenly “discovered” it didn’t have enough pilots after the new Flight Duty Time Limitation (FDTL) rules kicked in. Hundreds of flights vanished overnight. The rest of the airlines smelled blood and jacked up prices.The government, after three days of chaos, finally announced “emergency fare caps” on 6 December.

Everyone in the Northeast waited with bated breath. We thought: now they will finally enforce the UDAN model nationwide. After all, the same government has spent nine years telling us that ₹2,500–₹2,800 is a perfectly viable, sustainable fare for short sectors if airlines fly full, cut frills, and take a little government subsidy.

Instead, the Ministry of Civil Aviation dropped this bombshell:

Up to 500 km → maximum ₹7,500
500–1,000 km → maximum ₹12,000
1,000–1,500 km → maximum ₹15,000
Above 1,500 km → maximum ₹18,000

Both Imphal–Guwahati (276 km) and Imphal–Silchar (145 km) fall into the first bucket. Which means the government has just declared — with its own pen — that the “reasonable” upper limit for the exact same routes it has been running at ₹2,500 for eight years is now ₹7,500. Three times higher. In one stroke.Let that sink in.

The same ministry that proudly tweets every new UDAN route, that puts up hoardings of smiling tribal women boarding tiny ATRs, that claims 1.49 crore passengers have been “empowered”, has just told us that when push comes to shove, ₹7,500 is what an ordinary citizen should pay for a 45-minute flight that the government itself proved can be done for less than ₹3,000.

This is not just a fare cap; it is a confession.It is the government admitting that UDAN was never meant to be a permanent model for affordable aviation — it was a subsidised PR project that works only as long as a handful of seats are funded by taxpayer money.

The moment the subsidy tap runs dry or the big airlines throw a tantrum, the mask comes off and the real price reveals itself: ₹7,500 for Imphal–Guwahati, thank you very much.We have seen this film before — and very recently.

In her Budget speech in February 2025, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced a revamped version of the Ude Desh ka Aam Nagrik (UDAN) regional connectivity scheme, aiming to connect 120 new destinations and serve an additional 4 crore passengers over the next decade. Highlighting the scheme’s success since its launch eight years ago, she noted that UDAN has already operationalised 619 routes, connected 88 airports, and enabled around 1.5 crore middle-class Indians to fly for the first time.

The upgraded scheme will prioritise helipads and smaller airports in hilly areas, aspirational districts, and the North-East, while new greenfield airports will be coming up in Bihar.

However, in October 2025, barely two months ago, Manipur was in the middle of another airfare crisis. Airlines had quietly reduced Imphal–Guwahati flights from five daily to two. Fares shot up to ₹12,000–₹15,000. Highways were blocked because of the Manipur violence; no trains, no buses. Patients were dying because they couldn’t afford to fly. Students were forfeiting college seats.

What happened next was extraordinary. Former Chief Minister N. Biren Singh, BJP MLA L. Susindro Meitei, Governor Ajay Kumar Bhalla, and even the Congress state president Keisham Meghachandra put aside politics for once. Susindro flew to Delhi, camped in North Block, and hammered Civil Aviation Secretary Samir Kumar Sinha day after day.

The Governor wrote an official letter calling the situation “alarming”. After weeks of shouting, pleading, and public shaming, the Centre forced Air India Express to add flights and cap Imphal–Guwahati at ₹6,000.₹6,000 — still double the UDAN fare, but at least it was something we could scrape together in an emergency.

Two months later, the national “emergency cap” is ₹7,500 — higher than the relief our leaders bled for in October.If ₹6,000 was possible in October after local politicians twisted arms, why is the national cap ₹1,500 higher in December? What changed, except that the crisis is now pan-India and the airlines have more bargaining power?

During COVID, when airlines were genuinely on the verge of bankruptcy, the same ministry imposed caps starting at ₹2,500 for the shortest sector and going up to ₹10,000 for the longest. The industry survived. Many even made profits once traffic returned. Fuel was more expensive then. The rupee was weaker.

Yet the government found the courage to hold the line at ₹2,500–₹4,000 for short sectors.Today fuel is cheaper, the rupee is stable, and IndiGo has been posting record profits for three straight years. Yet the “emergency protection” offered to a Manipuri patient trying to reach Guwahati is a ceiling three times higher than what UDAN has been delivering for almost a decade.

The tragedy is that the UDAN model works. The Imphal–Guwahati and Imphal–Silchar routes are among the most heavily subsidised and most celebrated successes of the scheme. Alliance Air, and IndiGo themselves have been operating these sectors at ₹2,500–₹2,800 for years and still making enough money to keep bidding for new routes.

If the government really wanted to protect passengers in this crisis, it could have simply extended the UDAN cap nationwide for 30–60 days and increased the viability gap funding temporarily. Instead, it chose the path of least resistance: let the airlines charge what they want, as long as it’s under ₹7,500.

In the last 72 hours, IndiGo cancelled over 550 flights in a single day after the implementation of revised FDTL rules, causing severe disruptions across major airports including Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, and particularly the Northeast region.

The North-East has been hit hardest, with Guwahati’s Lokpriya Gopinath Bordoloi International Airport seeing widespread cancellations and very limited rebooking options. Passenger Priya Dutta from Kolkata, whose 7:20 a.m. IndiGo flight was cancelled on short notice, said alternative flights are either unavailable or prohibitively expensive, forcing her to stay overnight despite having taken leave from work.

The sudden grounding slashed seat availability on busy domestic routes, driving last-minute fares to extreme levels. On the Delhi–Mumbai sector alone, SpiceJet prices soared from ₹7,720 to ₹48,972, Air India from ₹6,200 to ₹36,107, and Akasa Air from ₹5,851 to ₹29,280.

The week-long crisis, triggered by an acute pilot and crew shortage following stricter DGCA FDTL rules enforced last year, has left thousands of passengers facing long queues, delayed or lost baggage, and poor airport facilities. The regulator has issued a show-cause notice to IndiGo CEO Pieter Elbers over “significant lapses in planning and resource management.” IndiGo has apologised and said it still operated over 700 flights to 113 destinations the previous day.

Amid India’s rapidly growing civil aviation market and surging air traffic demand, Air India and Air India Express announced on 6 December 2025 that, since 4 December, they have proactively capped economy-class fares on non-stop domestic routes to shield passengers from sharp last-minute surges normally triggered by revenue-management systems.

A spokesperson clarified that while it is technically not feasible to cap every possible combination involving one- or two-stop itineraries or mixed cabin classes booked through third-party platforms, the airlines are working with those platforms to introduce oversight. Both carriers are also urgently adding capacity to ensure travellers and their baggage reach their destinations as quickly as possible.

In mainland India, a train or a luxury bus is always an option. Even for some northeast states, the current flight problem won’t harm Nagaland, Mizoram, or Arunachal Pradesh, where railway is the alternate option.

But for Manipur, when the flight is cancelled or priced at ₹7,500, there is no Plan B. You either pay or you miss the surgery, the exam, the funeral, the wedding.

We trusted UDAN more than any other region because we had the most to lose. We cheered every new ATR landing, every ribbon-cutting at Pakyong or Tezu or Pasighat. We believed the slogan “Ude Desh ka Aam Naagrik” was written for us.Today that slogan rings hollow.

The aam naagrik from Imphal is being told that the same flight that cost ₹2,530 in 2017 is now “reasonably” priced at ₹7,500 in 2025 — because IndiGo didn’t hire enough pilots and the government doesn’t have the spine to make them pay the real cost of their mismanagement.

In this hour of uncertainty flight cancellations and reschedule, UDAN is not dead yet. There are still a few thousand seats a month sold at ₹2,500. But its soul — the radical idea that geography should not sentence you to poverty — has been quietly buried under a press release that celebrates “fare caps” while tripling the price for the people who needed the revolution the most.

And the next time someone in North Block says “₹7,500 is reasonable”, I hope they try explaining that to a mother in Imphal who has to choose between her child’s chemotherapy in Guwahati and the monthly ration at home.Because for us, the sky was never just transport. It was the only way out!

Naorem Mohen

Naorem Mohen is the Editor of Signpost News. Explore his views and opinion on X: @laimacha.