Statsguru: What explains cracks in infrastructure at India's major airports

An external tensile fabric at the arrival forecourt of the Delhi airport’s Terminal 1 collapsed recently because of water accumulation, said Delhi International Airport Ltd (DIAL). While no fatalities were reported, the incident serves as a grim reminder of last year’s fatal accident at the same terminal. Such structural failures are not rare anymore. In 2024 alone, media reports recorded at least five incidents of structure collapses and four cases of rainwater leakage at airports. This has been the case despite the share of aeronautical revenues in total revenues increasing for most of the country’s airports in FY24 – even if not to the level that many major overseas counterparts have (Chart 1).

 

 

For the country’s major airports, repair & maintenance expenditures declined year-on-year in proportion to their aeronautical revenues in FY24. However, there was a huge variation in this share: While the Airport Authority of India (AAI) spent over a fourth of its total aeronautical revenues during the year, Hyderabad spent just around nine per cent. The trend was mixed at two major overseas airports (Chart 2).

 

 

Expenditure on building maintenance for the country’s major airports is less than 7 per cent of their aeronautical revenues. The variation was too high – from 0.9 per cent to 6.8 per cent – in FY24 (Chart 3).

 

 

Trends shown in Charts 2 and 3 are despite an increase in the share of revenues from user development fee (UDF) in aeronautical revenues across airports. However, in Delhi’s case, it is much less than Hyderabad’s and AAI’s (Chart 4).

 

 

Half of repair & maintenance expenditure was allocated to plant & machinery at most airports, with the AAI being an exception. On the other hand, buildings, at most, accounted for one-fourth of repair & maintenance spending in FY24 (Chart 5).

 

 

Since the Covid-19 pandemic struck India in 20202, government-initiated audits and inspections of airports have been on the rise (Chart 6).