20 Cities Will Need Second Airport By 2030, Says Civil Aviation Ministry Study

At least 20 cities in India will need a second airport by 2030, the initial findings of a study by the civil aviation ministry has revealed, two officers directly involved in the exercise said on condition of anonymity.

Mumbai, Delhi, Goa, Visakhapatnam, Jaipur, Pune, Ahmadabad, Rajkot, Patna, Kolkata and Bangalore are among cities that will need a second airport by 2030. By 2035, more cities will join this list. The study is still work-in-progress and will also calculate by when each airport will reach its capacity.

Once it is completed, the ministry will write to respective state governments, sharing the information and asking them to identify land for a new airport at least five years before the airport reaches its capacity.

India’s airports currently handle 183.90 million passengers a year, according to the 2017-18 data released by aviation regulator Directorate General of Civil Aviation. The number has grown in recent years. It was 158.43 million in 2016-17 and 134.98 million in 2015-16.

This year, it is expected to cross 200 million. Some of the bigger airports are already operating in excess of their capacity. For instance, the Delhi airport handled 63.5 million passengers in 2017, and is expected to reach 70 million this year and will start operating beyond its capacity. It is also among the busiest airports worldwide, according to Airports Council International (ACI).

For the first time, the Delhi airport breached the 60 million-mark in 2017, making it to the list of the world’s top 20 busiest airports. The Indira Gandhi International Airport also became the seventh busiest in Asia, ahead of Seoul, Singapore and Bangkok.

“The study should be completed by the end of this year, and the aim is to map the saturation point,” said one of the two officials mentioned in the first instance, a senior official at Airports Authority India (AAI), which is conducting the study.

voters