The Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGIA) in New Delhi, which is one of the fastest growing major airports over the last four years, is now on the list of the 20 busiest airports in the world, as per an internal report by Delhi International Airport Limited (DIAL), states HT. Last year, the IGIA registered a 12.3% growth in passenger traffic as against 21% in 2016. According to DIAL, it was expected and also predicted that the passenger traffic will reach 95 million in the year 2023 because the airport’s expansion plan is on schedule.
As per the data based from Airports Council International (ACI), the global body that is responsible to monitor airport traffic, Delhi airport’s compound annual growth rate (CAGR) between the years 2014 and 2017 is 14.3%, which is the highest among airports handling minimum 40 million passengers per annum, ahead of Incheon airport in South Korea (10.5%), Pudong Shanghai airport in China (10.4%), and Dubai airport in UAE (7.4%).
Earlier, in the year 2014, IGIA’s passenger traffic growth was 8.3% in fourth place behind Pudong, Incheon and Istanbul’s Atatürk airports. Since then, the IGIA has been among the top three in the world in passenger traffic growth each year. In the year 2016, the highest growth of 21% was registered by IGIA as against global annual average passenger growth of 6.5%. This is due to the huge growth in domestic passengers, which is almost 20% in the last five years, a senior DIAL official said in the report. The official further informed that there has been more than 10% growth in air traffic movement. He added that after rising for three years, it was expected that the growth rate will come down as most airports that handle more than 70 million passengers grow less than 10% per annum.
According to a report by DIAL, over the last four years, 12 new scheduled airlines and over 10 international sectors have been introduced. The report added now the focus of DIAL is on airport capacity enhancement, terminal and airside infrastructure, increase in flights per day, and addition of new domestic as well as international sectors. Last year in August, it was reported that the master plan was changed by DIAL to hike capacity.
Soon, IGIA will also become the first airport in India to have four runways. The construction of the fourth runway is expected to begin this year and the airport officials are expecting to commission the runway by next year. Interestingly, this new move will increase the capacity of the airport from 75 flights to 105 flights an hour.