Predications have tipped India to overtake Britain as the world's third-largest market by 2025 and will have 478 million fliers by 2036.
India’s huge boom in air travel, led by a growing middle class increasingly taking to the skies, is wearing on its airports, which are struggling to cope with the massive surge in passenger numbers. Analysts have warned that billions of dollars are required to boost the country’s airport capacity.
Centre for Aviation (CAPA) estimates that India needs to invest US$45 billion by 2030 to keep up with demand.
“There’s an urgent need for capacity building in major Indian airports as they are bursting at the seams and close to saturation," Binit Somaia, South Asia Director at CAPA, told AFP.
India has witnessed a six-fold increase in passenger numbers over the past decade, thanks to better flight connectivity and cheap fares. Indian airports handled 265 million domestic passengers in 2016 and will cross 300 million this year, according to CAPA. The country's entire airport network is only capable of handling 317 million passengers, it says.
Predications have tipped India to overtake Britain as the world's third-largest market by 2025 and will have 478 million fliers by 2036.
“Some top airports have reached saturation. In the next five to seven years, the top 30 to 40 airports in India will be performing beyond their capacity," said Somaia of the Sydney-based CAPA.
Ten Indian airports -- including Dehradun, Jaipur, Guwahati, Mangalore, Srinagar and Pune -- are already operating beyond their capacity, CAPA said in a report released last month. Others are nearing their limit.
The situation is even more pressing at Mumbai's Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport (CSIA). CAPA says it is at 94% capacity and is "close to saturation”.
Earlier this year, the airport said it had broken its own world record for handling the most number of arrivals and departures on a single runway in one day. Some 980 flights landed and took off within a 24-hour period.
The airport is surrounded by slum settlements, making it impossible to increase the number of runways. Acquiring space for airport expansion remains a key obstacle in India's heavily congested cities.
To ease the burden, the government is building a new airport at Navi Mumbai 30km away, a project which has seen repeated delays due to land disputes. It is currently scheduled to open in 2023.
"The situation at CSIA will worsen until the new airport is operational," Amber Dubey, India head of aerospace and defence at global consultancy KPMG, told AFP, describing the delays as "unacceptable".
In the budget last month, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley allocated US$613 million to the Airports Authority of India to expand facilities.