Delhi’s IGI airport enters busiest airports club, ranked 9th by global airports body

The Delhi airport is currently undergoing an expansion project and will soon add a fourth runway and additional passenger handling capacity at terminals. Civil Aviation Secretary Rajiv Bansal said at a recent event that the airport will soon have a capacity to handle over 10 crore passengers a year, catapulting it into a select league of airports globally. India is the world’s third-largest aviation market that is rapidly growing. The government has ambitions to transform India into a global aviation hub and sees large airports like Delhi playing a key role to meet that end.

The Delhi airport, however, did not feature among the busiest airports by international passengers handled, which means that India’s resurgent domestic passenger traffic mainly contributed to the improvement in the airport’s overall ranking. The same appears to be true for US airports as well, as none was among the top 10 airports by international passenger traffic. On that count, Dubai retained the pole position as it handled almost 6.61 crore international travellers in 2022, followed by London Heathrow with 5.82 crore international flyers. Others in this segment included hubs like Amsterdam, Paris, Istanbul, Frankfurt, Madrid, Doha, and Singapore.

“While US airport hubs were able to recover quicker due to their strong domestic market, we are now witnessing global hubs joining upper ranks–including Dubai, Istanbul, and London Heathrow airport. While we continue to march forward cautiously amidst multiple headwinds that could impact the speed and magnitude of global air traffic recovery, the latest rankings represent an important milestone in reaching pre-pandemic levels,” ACI World Director General Luis Felipe de Oliveira said.

It is worth noting that none of the Chinese airports featured in the list as the country was under strict pandemic-related curbs till late-2022. However, with most of the curbs on international travel to and from China now done away with, its airports could alter the rankings for 2023. China is the world’s second-largest aviation market after the US.