The Directorate General of Civil Aviation under the Ministry of Civil Aviation, Government of India, is the main regulating and governing body for Civil Aviation in India primarily dealing with safety issues. It is responsible for regulation of air transport services to/from/within India and for enforcement of civil air regulations, air safety and airworthiness standards.

The DGCA’s dashboard data has information on the number of passengers who travelled from and to different airports in India from 2015 till date. The data has been downloaded with the help of Vivek Mathew and made available at city-level on OpenCity. You can find destination and origin-wise monthly domestic and quarterly international data annually from 2015 onwards for Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Chennai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Mumbai and Pune.

In this analysis we look at what these numbers tell us about how busy our major airports are, and how the numbers have been growing in the last 5 year period. You might also remember that the Covid-19 pandemic affected the aviation sector badly and the numbers took a plunge during 2020 and 2021.

The busiest airports of them all

Delhi and Mumbai are the only two Indian airports to rank among the top 50 busiest airports in the world as per 2023 data. While Delhi is the 10th busiest, Mumbai comes in at 27.

The DGCA data also shows that while Delhi clocked close to 71.5 million passengers in 2023, Mumbai came second at 50.7 million. Bengaluru follows further behind at 36.7 million followed by Hyderabad and Chennai. Most of the cities after Bengaluru see a much smaller fraction of the passengers that pass through Delhi.

When seen in terms of split between international and domestic travelers, the numbers tell a slightly different story. While Bengaluru and Mumbai are separated by only 50L passengers when it comes to domestic, the number of international passengers is thrice. While Chennai has a total passenger count less than Hyderabad and Bengaluru, the number of international passengers is much higher.

In the three metros – Delhi, Mumbai and Chennai – international passengers account for 25% of the total passengers, a fraction not seen in any other cities.

These eight metros also take a large bulk of Indian passenger traffic. 90% of the passenger traffic in 2023 either originated or was destined to one of these eight metros. Only 10% of the passengers traveled between one non-metro city and another or internationally.

More than 40% of the passengers in 2023 traveled between metros and non-metros suggesting a strong growth outside the metro areas. In fact, more than 70% of all traffic was domestic, either between the metros or between metros and other tier-2 and tier-3 destinations. Data on nature of travel, the contribution of holidaying tier-1 city dwellers and business travel can reveal interesting details on how people in India are flying.

Growth in 5 years

Given the narrative about the need for second airports in most Indian cities, one would expect that air travel is booming in Indian cities, at least the metros. Comparison of the numbers between 2018 and 2023 shows that is far from the case.

In terms of absolute numbers the map looks similar to the 2023 map with Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru at the top followed by the other cities. However, in 2018, Chennai was busier than Hyderabad and Kolkata was close.

In the five years, while most of the major airports have become busier, Chennai and Kolkata have seen a decrease in footfall, of around 10%. Bengaluru has seen the highest increase followed by Hyderabad. The larger airports of Mumbai and Delhi have seen only a modest increase between 2018 and 2023 which could also be down to their reaching capacity.

What caused this drop in some cities and slow increase in other cities? As noted above, the Covid-19 pandemic affected the aviation sector strongly. While Bengaluru and Mumbai managed to get out of the slump with strong growth, Chennai and Kolkata are yet to reach pre-pandemic levels. The rate of growth over the last two years also don’t show a large increase in the near future.

Second Airports

Delhi and Mumbai are in the process of building second airports to decongest the main ones. The Noida International Airport being built at Jewar is expected to start commercial operations from April 2025. The Navi Mumbai Airport is also expected to start commercial operations around the same time.

While these airports see upwards of 50 million passengers each year, Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Chennai have already started planning for second airports. While the search for Bengaluru’s second airport seems to be narrowing towards Nelamangala, Chennai’s plans at Parandur have run into protests. Hyderabad, meanwhile is planning to revive the old airport to handle some traffic.

The operating idea is that the number of passengers is expected to keep growing at a steady rate and construction of the airport in parallel will meet the demands when it eventually reaches that state. But looking at the numbers in these cities and the five year growth rate tells a different story.

While the air travel footfall in Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Pune and Ahmedabad have kept in sync with the population growth in the cities, in Delhi the air travel numbers have lagged behind while they have seen a decrease in Kolkata and Chennai.

The capacity of Hyderabad’s airport is 40 million passengers per anum. The current 5Y growth rate is less than 10% and at the current rate, which is around 1.9% each year compounded. Even assuming an optimistic growth rate of 3% per annum, it will take 16 years to reach its capacity.

For Chennai, it is yet to reach pre-covid numbers and the duration is much longer. However, there are also plans to increase terminal capacity in-place. The capacity is set to increase to 35 million by 2025 with the new terminal coming up. Even at a very optimistic growth rate of 3% per annum, it will take 18 years to reach capacity for Chennai.

In Bengaluru, the capacity as of now is 60 million per year. At an optimistic 3% growth rate Bengaluru will reach capacity with just two terminals only in 17 years. There are also plans for Terminal 3 which can add another 20 million at least, but even that is contingent on traffic, which makes one wonder about the need for a new airport and the start of planning in 2024.

Decongesting airports is the new buzzword in Indian cities right now, but given the current rate of growth in air travel, it is important that plans for future development of greenfield airports are looked at anew and feasibility re-thought. The aviation sector is also one of the key contributors to GHG emissions and expansion needs to be done with carbon and fuel efficiency in mind given India’s targets to go carbon-neutral.

The growth in India also needs to shift towards other tier-2 and tier-3 cities. Understanding air-travel patterns and connecting cities such that people have to transit less through larger cities, and developing tier-2 city airports as transit hubs can also decrease the load on these metros lessening the need for new greenfield airports.