Record flyers, flights at Mumbai, Bengaluru airports in 2023-24, beat pre-Covid numbers
Times of India | 23 April 2024
Finally, annual passenger traffic at the big city airports of Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru and Hyderabad has soared past the peaks attained before Covid struck and air travel went into a spiral.
But when it comes to air traffic or the number of flights operated to and from an airport, only Mumbai and Bengaluru have managed to cross the pre-Covid numbers, shows data released by the Airports Authority of India.
The data also revealed that for the third straight year, Mumbai airport registered the highest year-on-year passenger traffic growth among Indian metro airports. From April 2023 to March 2024, Mumbai handled about 5.3 crore flyers, a 20% jump.
Delhi, the largest airport in the country, handled about 7.4 crore passengers and registered a 13% growth; Bengaluru handled 3.7 crore, marking an 18% growth. These numbers are going past the pre-Covid peaks of 2018-19.
Kolkata, Chennai airports behind pre-Covid numbers
Indian air travel numbers were at their best in 2018-19. The pandemic struck in 2020, but India’s passenger and air traffic had already entered a slump a year before that, in the summer of 2019 when Jet Airways suspended operations.
In 2018-19, Delhi handled close to 7 crore passengers. In 2022- 2023, 6.5 crore passengers passed through Delhi, coming close to the pre-pandemic number; it finally went past it recently when the year ended March 31, registering a traffic of 7.3 crore. But when it comes to flight movements, Delhi airport had handled 4.6 lakh flights in 2018-19 and the number crept back up to only 4.4 lakh in 2023-24.
But Mumbai airport managed 3.24 lakh flights in 2023-24, which was about 3,700 more than the 3.21 lakh handled in 2018-19. On Nov 11 last year, Mumbai broke its single-day air traffic record with 1,032 flights handled on its single runway in 24 hours. The previous record of 1,004 arrivals and departures was set preCovid, on Dec 9, 2018.
The airports of Chennai and Kolkata are yet to cross their preCovid highs in both passenger traffic as well as air traffic.