India has done the paperwork for a seaplane revolution. The Ministry of Civil Aviation says 14-16 water aerodromes have been formally awarded or identified under UDAN. The Statue of Unity at Sardar Sarovar, Sabarmati riverfront in Ahmedabad, multiple sites in the Andamans, Assam, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh and Lakshadweep. The UDAN scheme’s manuals and seaplane guidelines spell out how to build a water aerodrome--floating jetties, security perimeter, navigation aids and a dedicated seaplane viability gap fund of around Rs.200 crore has been set aside in recent budgets to support operations.
On the other side of the ledger is the simple fact you are pointing to not one commercial seaplane route is operating today. The only serious attempt so far SpiceJet’s Ahmedabad-Statue of Unity flights on the Sabarmati and at Kevadia, launched in October 2020 under UDAN and shut down within months, officially due to Covid and operational reasons, and has never come back. New UDAN rounds have awarded additional seaplane routes including to Andaman and Nicobar, Assam and Lakshadweep, but as of 2024–26, multiple policy reviews note that 32 seaplane routes awarded under UDAN and none is operational as yet.
So what are the reasons for not flying? The reasons are regulatory and others. When seaplanes first appeared in UDAN 3.0, India effectively had to invent a regulatory category on the fly. DGCA issued Civil Aviation Requirements for seaplane operations, and the ministry asked the Bureau of Civil Aviation Security (BCAS) to draft new security standards for water aerodromes because existing rules assumed fenced land airports with controlled perimeters and conventional terminals. That created a three‑way dependency on DGCA to issue licence to operator and the aircraft and AAI and state agencies build and licence the water aerodrome. And, BCAS signs off on security architecture like access control, passenger screening, patrols on a lake or river with multiple public entry points.
In the Andamans, for instance, six water aerodromes were put up for bidding under UDAN 3 (Havelock, Neil, Long Island, Hut Bay and others). Only one operator bid, and its proposals were not awarded because of problems with paperwork. The ministry had to send officials to the Maldives to study how seaplanes were regulated there before revisiting the design of India’s own rules. Unless BCAS sets security standards for water aerodromes, the file cannot move. In other words, the aircraft could be licensed and the routes subsidised, but the infrastructure and security approvals lagged, leaving operators with nowhere legal to dock.
On the top of it, the scenic sites like Chilika Lake, Wular Lake, Kerala backwaters, Andaman lagoons are also ecologically and politically sensitive. Chilika is a Ramsar wetland with fragile bird habitats. Wular is a critical water body in Kashmir. Kerala’s backwaters support dense fishing and tourism economies. Any seaplane movement there must clear a stack of environmental clearances and withstand public scrutiny.
Previous proposals for seaplane bases on Chilika ran into resistance from the Chilika Development Authority and conservationists who warned that repeated takeoffs and landings would disturb migratory birds and increase pollution. In the Andamans, plans to connect Havelock, Neil and other islands via seaplane stumbled over not just paperwork but also concerns about wake turbulence, coral damage and conflicts with fishing zones. In Kerala, pilots have long argued that the backwaters would be ideal, but local authorities have so far favoured conventional runways and heliports over amphibious operations.
India has no real domestic pool of seaplane pilots. Every Twin Otter or Caravan amphibious captain needs specific ratings and experience. Training at scale requires either an in‑country seaplane training centre or long‑term partnerships with foreign schools. So far, that has not happened in a sustained way.
On the water, operations are more complex than they look in tourism brochures. You need harbour master coordination to avoid conflicts with boats, ferries and fishermen. Water condition like waves, swell, debris, submerged logs etc can make a location unusable on a given day. Runway concepts like declared distances and obstacle clearance have to be translated into water lanes with buoys and visual markings.
All of this has to be codified in standard operating procedures, backed by DGCA‑approved manuals and recurrent training. In the Maldives, that ecosystem was built over decades. India is trying to compress that into a few UDAN rounds, with limited institutional memory and no dedicated seaplane operator yet willing to carry the risk long enough to mature the system.
There is a policy paradox on the top of the policy. UDAN manuals and seaplane guidelines talk about last-mile connectivity and island and coastal access, but on the ground that does not seem to be converting into water landings because of the same policy.
India’s seaplane story will remain what it is today. A set of stunning water bodies listed in UDAN documents, a handful of jetties and terminals built on water. It is more of a scenic idea that keeps dying before it can even leave the dock.