Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGIA) became the seventh busiest airport globally putting behind Dubai Airport. According to UK-based air consultancy firm OAG, in this month IGIA handled 30.9 lakh passengers as against 30.7 lakh passengers handled by Dubai Airport.

Worth mentioning here is that the pandemic has changed the pecking order of world airports. In terms of combined domestic and international seat capacity by airlines, Dubai Airport was at number 3 in pre-pandemic November 2019 while IGAI was at number 10.

However, Dubai remains the world’s busiest international airport by seats, but IGIA does not even figure in the list of top 10 international airports due to continued restrictions on scheduled foreign flights by India, the Times of India mentioned in a report. The revival of domestic air travel in India has led to a revival of footfall at airports, making IGIA overtake Dubai in overall seat capacity.

Worth mentioning here is that in pre-pandemic times, nearly 60% of the international traffic between India and the rest of the world flew foreign airlines. Of them, Gulf carriers took the lion’s share in terms of both point to point and connecting traffic. “If India is able to take steps to lower the steep operating cost structures for its airlines and the latter are able to mount more nonstops to the rest of the world, including distant continents, then the blow to airlines of nearby hubs will be big. Transit traffic to and from India is a big source of filling the planes of these airlines,” the daily quoted an airline official as saying.

Thanks to traffic recovery, India’s busiest and second busiest airports, Delhi’s IGI and Mumbai airport, respectively, are now using all their terminals. Meanwhile, the 10 busiest airports overall this month, according to OAG, are Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson, Dallas Fort Worth, Chicago O’Hare, Guangzhou, Denver, Los Angeles International, Delhi IGIA, Dubai DXB, Tokyo Haneda and Shenzhen. The 10 busiest airports by international seat capacity alone this month are Dubai DXB, London Heathrow, Amsterdam, Paris CDG, Frankfurt, Istanbul, Doha, Madrid Adolfo Suarez-Barajas, New York JFK and Dublin, the ToI report mentioned citing OAG data.

“Only half of the current Top 10 airports were in the Top 10 in November 2019. Still missing are Singapore (23), Hong Kong (27), Incheon (45) and Bangkok (63) as recovery in Asia continues to falter,” says OAG.