IGI is country’s busiest airport

For the second year running, the Indira Gandhi International (IGI) airport, Delhi has beaten Mumbai airport as the busiest airport in India. In 2010, IGI handled 11.6% more flights and 1.4% more passenger traffic than Mumbai. Mumbai airport has been facing a severe space crunch, and resultant constraints on its infrastructure. The situation is further worsened due to the cross runways at Mumbai airport which prevent flights from taking off and landing simultaneously. Also, cross runways can be operational for just about 14 hours a day on clear, good weather days. In spite of this, till recently, Mumbai had been handling more traffic and flights than any other airport, including the Delhi airport. In 2006, Mumbai airport had 21.37 million passengers going through it, while Delhi airport had 19.37 million. The year 2009 saw the situation being reversed with Delhi handling 25.25 million passengers and Mumbai airport seeing 24.8 million passengers. New plans for the Mumbai airport envisage a new integrated terminal with an annual capacity of 40 million passengers which is much less than the demand. In contrast, Delhi’s airport terminals have an annual capacity of about 52.5 million passengers, with terminal T3 handling 34 million, terminal 1B 10 million and T1 about 7.5 million passengers.