50 busiest airports set to breach capacity this year
Half of these 50 already handling too much air traffic
NEWDELHI: At least 25 of the 50 busiest airports in India are already operating beyond their capacity, while the rest of them will reach optimal capacity in 2018 with the aviation industry growing at an unanticipated 18-20% every year, according to government documents accessed by Hindustan Times through the Right to Information (RTI) Act.
This holds true for both governmentand privately run airports, the documents show. Key airports such as Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad and Pune are already saturated, while Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai, Goa and Lucknow are among important aviation hubs that will be reach full capacity by the end of the year.
Experts r say that the figures only show overall capacity, but in peak hours, all these airports operate beyond capacity – leading to long queues at check-in counters, security risks because of compromised frisking, and clogging of gates leading to flight delays.
According to the civil aviation ministry, India has witnessed a phenomenal growth -- the highest
in the world -- in the sector in the last four years and is already the world’s third-largest domestic aviation market.
Smaller airports such as Leh, Surat, Tirupati, Jodhpur and Silchar are also operating beyond capacity.
The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) on May 2 approved investments in expansion and upgradation of integrated terminals in Chennai, Guwahati and Lucknow by the Airports Authority of India at a cost of ₹2,467 crores, ₹1,232 crores and ₹1,383 crores respectively.
Minister of state for civil aviation Jayant Sinha, while announcing the expansion work, had said that ₹1 lakh crore would be invested to increase the capacity of Indian airports. But passengers will have to bear the brunt until these are completed over the next 3-4 years, according to experts.
“The infrastructure work should have been planned years ago. Now when the situation has reached the alarming stage, government has started expansion again. The focus should be now on new technologies such as biometric access, self-check-in to reduce congestion while the expansion work should continue alongside,” said D Sudhakara Reddy, founder of the Air Passengers Association of India (APAI). The government has launched a new initiative called NABH (also called NextGen Airports for Bharat) Nirman to enhance capacity by five times to one billion trips in the next 10-15 years.
India has 94 operational airports at the moment — it expects to inaugurate six more within a month, with Pakyong as the 100th operational airport.
AAI is also in the process of implementing plans to create additional capacity in airports such as Agartala, Patna, Srinagar, Pune, Trichy, Vijayawada, Port Blair, Jaipur, Mangalore, Dehradun, Jabalpur, Kolhapur, Goa, Rupsi, Leh, Calicut, Imphal, Varanasi and Bhubaneswar with a capital expenditure of ₹20,178 crore in the next 4-5 years.
In the private sector, upgradation and expansion is in the offing for the Delhi, Bengaluru, Hyderabad airports which will require an estimated investment of ₹25,000 crore over the next 5 years, according to ministry officials.
“What we have been doing so far are stop-gap arrangements, and despite numerous initiatives, Indian airports are congested. In peak hour, the situation become worse and expansion should be planned keeping in mind the peak hour traffic,” said Mark Martin, founder and CEO of Martin Consulting, which operates in the aviation sector.