Focus on smaller airports before building mega ones

India is the world's fifth-largest civil aviation market, handling over 700,000 aircraft movements annually.

- Anjuli Bhargava

Between April 2024 and March 2025, a total of 200 million (international and domestic) passengers flew from the country's airports. Even as airline debuts and closures dominate headlines, the airport ecosystem remains steady, because airports don't shut shop overnight.The growth in operational airport numbers has been impressive - from 74 in 2014 to 164 now. And there is ambition for more. Recently, the Airport Authority of India (AAI) chairman outlined a plan to set up 34 "mega airports" by 2047. With two new mega airports, Navi Mumbai in Maharashtra and Jhevar in Uttar Pradesh, expected to start functioning soon, India is set to have seven mega airports, up from five (Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Bengaluru, and Hyderabad) in 2019.

Coming to the smaller airports, many have become operational in recent years, and a clutch of these are thriving. The AAI chairman had listed previously nonfunctional airports that are now mini hubs - Darbhanga, Salem, Jharsuguda, Kanpur, Deogar, Nashik, Hollongi, and Kolhapur, among others. The dawn of air connectivity has acted like a new lifeline for many of these smaller towns and cities, which now support a thriving business-traveller community and are witnessing an uptick in the leisure traffic, fuelled by surging disposable incomes and growing aspirations.