Explained: Why Delhi airport always fails to meet flight-handling demand

Even as it has three runways, Delhi's IGI airport barely manages to handle 73 air traffic movements during peak hours, against airlines' combined demand for 90

New Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International (IGI) airport, which has three operational runways, late last year clocked its peak record of handling 1,339 air traffic movements (ATMs) in a day. Even as this was significantly higher than its usual count, the number would seem rather unimpressive when compared with the 969 ATMs achieved a few days ago by the Mumbai airport, which has only one runway.

Why does Delhi handle so few ATMs in a day despite three runways? There certainly is no dearth of demand – the average consolidated demand from all airlines would require the airport to handle 90