Passenger footfall at Delhi airport nears pre-pandemic levels: Data
NEW DELHI: Passenger footfall has increased considerably at Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGIA), with the airport catering to 5.23 million passengers this May, data from the Airports Authority of India (AAI) showed. The footfall is nearly that of May 2019 when the airport had catered to 5.28 million passengers, before Covid-19 impacted flight operations worldwide.
The data shows that there has been a steady rise in the monthly passenger footfall and flight operations, after the pandemic restrictions eased substantially in October 2021. Since then, the airport has seen a gradual increase in both flight numbers and the passenger footfall.the footfall increased to 3.7 million passengers in February 2022 and to around 5.07 million in March, before dipping slightly to 4.92 million passengers in April, the AAI data showed. The footfall of 5.23 million passengers in May is the highest so far, AAI officials said.
In comparison, in 2019, the Delhi airport handled 5.37 million passengers in February,
Uptick in flight ops
5.48 million in March, 4.96 million in April and 5.28 million in May, the AAI said.
In terms of total aircraft movements, both domestic and International, there has been an increase of around 37% since February — it increased from 26,176 to 36,072 in May. This is in fact, slightly higher than the 36,055 movements the airport saw in May of 2019.
“Post resumption of flight operations at all three terminals and a gradual recovery from the global Covid-19 lockdown, flight movements and passenger footfall have shown a steady increase and we are close to pre-covid levels now,” said an airport official, on condition of anonymity.
The Delhi airport handled 4.18 million domestic passengers in May, while the international passenger count stood at 1.05 million passengers. In February, the airport handled 3.06 million domestic passengers and 0.72 million international passengers.
Covid-19 protocols are still in place at the airport and that includes functional Covid-testing facilities, temperature screening, sanitisation and social distancing. Passengers are still required to wear masks on board the aircraft.
Commercial operations of domestic and international flights were suspended from March 24, 2020, in a bid to contain the spread of Covid-19. However, Terminal 3 was the first to reopen, on May 25, 2020, with Terminal 2 opening up in a calibrated manner from July 22, 2021 onwards. Terminal-1 was the last to reopen, with flights resuming operations from there from October 31, 2021 onwards.
In February, 2022, the newly revamped Terminal-1 was made operational for the public, with domestic passengers now exiting from the new arrivals section of T-1, instead of the earlier T-1 (C) building.