More packed flights took off from city airport in ’24 than ever before
Times of India | 3 January 2025
12 Kolkata: Planes that took off from Kolkata airport last year carried more passengers than ever before. While the previous highest passenger count per flight was 143, which was recorded in 2019, it was 146 in 2024. This is a substantial jump from the previous two years, when the figure per flight was 129 in 2022 and just 123 in 2023.
Kolkata airport's footfall count in 2024 also increased by 18% over the previous year, clocking the best post-Covid performance. Though the count was lower than that in 2019, airport officials said had the number of flights from Kolkata matched that of 2019, this year's passenger count would have exceeded 2019's. Between Jan and Dec last year, Kolkata airport hosted 2.1 crore passengers on approximately 1.5 lakh flights. This is more than 32 lakh above what it clocked in 2023 when 1.8 crore people used the airport.
In 2019, the airport hosted 2.3 crore passengers. It dropped to only 94.6 lakh during the start of the Covid pandemic in 2020 when the airport was shut for a substantial period, with a slew of restrictions even when air travel resumed, crashing passenger figures. The numbers increased significantly in 2021, when the airport recorded a footfall of 1.1 crore passengers.
Airport officials are hopeful that if the number of flights returns to pre-Covid level this year and old connections in the international as well as domestic sectors are revived, Kolkata airport should easily bounce back to pre-Covid numbers by the end of 2025. "We maintained a steady flow of passengers through the year and did significantly well in the past three months of the year. In Dec, we had 1.7 lakh more passengers than last year. Overall, we managed to serve 32 lakh more fliers than that in 2022. But what stunted our growth is the limited number of flights. Once the number of flights gets back to pre-Covid levels, the footfall will increase faster," said a senior airport official.
According to data, 2,12,17,064 passengers travelled through Kolkata airport in 2024 by 1,45,650 flights. In 2023, 1,40,565 flights operated, which means only 5,085 flights were added in a year, leading to a mere 3.7% rise. While there were 19,006 international flights in 2023, the numbers came down to 18,888 international flights in 2024. There was a slight rise in domestic flights, though. While 1,21,739 flights operated in 2023, the number of domestic flights to and from Kolkata airport was 1,26,772. In 2019, there were 1,62,468 flight movements, 1,38,881 of which were domestic and 23,587 international.
The stunted growth in the international sector was also addressed by the civil aviation minister, Kinjarapu Ram Mohan Naidu, at the airport's 100 years' celebration last month. At the function, Naidu, MoS for aviation and MP Saugata Roy had called for more international flights to and from Kolkata, once a global hub.
"The airport is performing very well in the domestic sector but we need to work on introducing more international flights. We have been pressing for the revival of old global routes, like London, Hong Kong, Guangzhou and Colombo. The state has written to the Centre. The civil aviation ministry has to put in their weight at meetings with private airlines to revive international flights," said Anil Punjabi, national committee member representing Travel Agents Federation of India (East).