Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGIA) emerged as the world’s second-busiest airport in March, in terms of total seat capacity and frequency of domestic and international flights. IGIA handled about 31.65 million domestic passengers and 5.49 million international ones. It had emerged as the top airport in the country in terms of handling domestic as well as international passenger traffic in 2020 and 2021. Now it has surpassed China’s Guangzhou airport, which was the fourth-busiest airport globally. Before the pandemic, IGIA had ranked 23rd among the busiest airports of the world. According to the Official Airline Guide (OAG), a leading global travel data provider, whilst Atlanta retains its position as the largest, Dubai was knocked out of second place in March by Delhi which moved up from third place in February. According to the report, IGIA (3,611,181 seats), which is India’s busiest airport, has knocked out Dubai International Airport (3,554,527 seats) to grab the second position.
Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport (ATL) has retained its top position (with 4,422,436 seats).
“London’s Heathrow Airport ranked fourth with a seating capacity of 3,510,941, Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport obtained fifth position (3,460,566 seats), Chicago’s O'Hare International Airport stands at sixth position (3,293,417 seats), Los Angeles International Airport ranked seventh (3,226,369 seats), Denver International Airport ranked eighth (3,179,730 seats), Tokyo International comes ninth (3,114,035 seats) and the Guangzhou Airport stands at tenth position (3,082,153 seats),” OAG report stated.
Videh Kumar Jaipuriar, CEO, Delhi International Airport Limited (DIAL) said that the pandemic had hit the travel and tourism sectors hard. “Travel restrictions had badly affected the travel and tourism sectors for two consecutive years.
But now, with the rise in the number of vaccinated people globally, governments are easing travel restrictions and slowly opening up their borders. Last month India opened its borders and allowed the entry of fully vaccinated international travelers.
These steps have largely helped the travel and tourism industry and given a much-needed boost to air travel,” he said. “The rankings are based on scheduled capacity in the current month and compared to the equivalent month in 2019, pre-pandemic. The top 10 busiest airports in the world have been calculated using total domestic and international seat capacity and frequency of flights from a particular airport,” the operator of IGIA said.
“During the pandemic, IGIA had taken several measures like a contactless boarding facility, a sanitised environment inside and outside the terminals, etc. The airport had received the ACI Health Accreditation twice during the pandemic and it was declared the second-safest airport in the world by Safe Travel Barometer’. These measures have helped in building confidence among flyers that ‘flying is safe,” the operator said.