Congested hubs: More effort needed for capacity at Delhi, Mumbai airports

The delays in implementing plans for Mumbai's second airport also must bear a significant share of the blame

In recently released figures for air traffic in 2017, Indira Gandhi International Airport in Delhi featured as the seventh most used airport worldwide. The increase in traffic through Delhi’s airport over the past years has been considerable. In 2017, it for the first time handled more than 60 million passengers – in total, 63.5 million flyers passed through Indira Gandhi International Airport’s Terminals 1 and 3. Since 2010, the number of passengers through Delhi has almost doubled, and the number of airlines and destinations have also increased. A growing proportion of that traffic is transit travellers. Meanwhile, India’s other major