Delhi Airport Now Among The Top 20 Busiest Airports In The World!

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.

According to Delhi International Airport Ltd (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.

Here are a few interesting figures that make Delhi one of the fastest growing airports in the world:

• As per the data reported by Airports Council International (ACI), the global body that is responsible to monitor global airport traffic, Delhi airport’s compound annual growth rate (CAGR) between the years 2014 and 2017 is 14.3%.
• This growth rate is the highest amongst the airports handling minimum 40 million passengers per annum, which includes famous international airports like Incheon airport in South Korea (10.5%), Pudong Shanghai airport in China (10.4%), and Dubai airport in UAE (7.4%).
• In fact, since 2014, IGIA has been among the top three in the world when it comes to passenger traffic growth.
• 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.
• 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 that now the focus of DIAL is on airport capacity enhancement, terminal infrastructure, increase in flights per day and addition of new domestic as well as international sectors.

To do this, DIAL is expected to get an investment of Rs 9000 Crores. This investment will enable Delhi airport to boost its capacity and handle 100 million passengers in a year.

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.