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MUMBAI: Mumbai airport has registered the highest passenger traffic growth among all metro airports in the country for the second straight year in a row. In the financial year 2022-23, the year-on-year growth in Mumbai’s domestic and international passenger traffic combined was 102%, shows latest data released by the Airports Authority of India.
Bengaluru came second with a combined passenger traffic growth of 96% followed by Chennai at 95%, Hyderabad at 69% and Delhi at 66% growth.
Mumbai airport has been topping the list only due to the vagaries of the pandemic. Before Covid-19, when India’s domestic passenger traffic registered a double-digit growth between 2015 and 2018, Mumbai airport, plagued by infrastructure constraints, was the only metro airport to regularly show single-digit growth. For instance, in 2017-18, it registered passenger traffic growth of 7. 5%, down from 8. 5% in 2016-17. By comparison, the average year-on-year passenger traffic growth registered by Indian airports in 2017-18 was 16. 5 %.
In the coming years, as airports with parallel runways such as Delhi, Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Kolkata respond to the growing demand in air travel, Mumbai airport, which operates out of a nearly saturated single runway, is slated to once again fall back in rank.
This time around, Mumbai and other metro airports’ growth is largely attributable to the mega jump seen in international passenger volume in the past 12 months. Last March, the government had lifted the ban on international scheduled airline passenger flights imposed at the onset of the pandemic in March 2020. As a result, international passenger traffic at Mumbai airport zoomed 252% between April 2022 and March 2023—Mumbai airport handled over 1 crore international passengers in 2022-23 compared with 32 lakh in 2021-22, that is.
By comparison, Delhi, the largest airport of India in terms of passenger and air traffic, saw a140% rise in international passenger traffic.
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