Vande Bharat recorded a year-on-year passenger growth of nearly 34%, with total passengers increasing from 2.97 crore in FY25 to 3.98 crore in FY26.
The Vande Bharat Sleeper service, introduced in January 2026, carried 1.21 lakh passengers across 119 trips in its first three months, indicating early adoption of the new segment.
In an official release, the Ministry of Railways stated that the Vande Bharat Express, since its launch in February 2019, has carried over 9.1 crore passengers through one lakh trips.
In comparison, domestic aviation growth remained limited during the same period. For the first 11 months of FY26, air passenger traffic rose 1.6% year-on-year, indicating a slowdown.
According to global analytics firm Crisil’s latest report, air traffic in FY26 is projected to grow 0–3% year-on-year, reaching 165–170 million passengers.
The Government of India announced UDAN 2.0 on March 25, 2026, with a capital outlay of ₹28,840 crore to develop 100 new airports and 200 helipads over FY27-36, building on UDAN 1.0, which had an outlay of ₹8,523 crore implemented over FY17–26.
The analytics firm noted that UDAN 2.0 represents a shift towards a more comprehensive regional aviation framework, including airport development, operations and maintenance, helipad expansion and support for airline viability.
Despite infrastructure expansion, UDAN routes account for only 2–3% of total domestic passenger traffic, indicating a limited contribution to overall passenger volumes.
Among UDAN-supported airports, only Hindon and Kannur crossed one million annual passengers in FY26, driven by increased airline capacity deployment.
Data also shows that smaller regional airports recorded stronger post-COVID growth on a low base, with some airports seeing three to ten times growth between FY20 and FY25, compared with 1.2 times growth in overall passenger traffic.
