As India’s domestic aviation market soars to become the world’s fastest-growing, a stark divide is emerging between its century-old metropolitan airports and a new generation of aviation hubs, an analysis of official data reveals.
According to a TOI report, the iconic airports in Mumbai and Delhi have seen air traffic effectively stagnate since 2018, trapped by capacity constraints just as newer facilities in cities like Bengaluru and Hyderabad record explosive growth.
What explains zero growth for Mumbai and Delhi air traffic?
Data from the Airports Authority of India (AAI), as highlighted by TOI, paints a telling picture. Comparing traffic from April to July in 2025 with the same period in 2018, Delhi airport saw a 2.6% decline in aircraft movements, while Mumbai’s figures dipped by 0.2%.
This stagnation exists despite an 8.5% rise in passenger traffic at Mumbai and a 6% increase in Delhi over the same period, pointing to a supply struggling to keep up with rampant demand.
The story of arrested growth is not confined to India’s top two cities. The data shows even more pronounced declines at other legacy metros: Chennai’s air traffic fell by 7.6% and Kolkata’s by a significant 10%.
Why are old airports stagnating while new hubs are soaring?
The split, as highlighted in the TOI report, is largely defined by history and infrastructure. On one side are the capacity-constrained airports from a bygone era — Mumbai (commissioned in 1942), Kolkata (1924) and Chennai (1930). On the other are modern, strategically planned airports such as those in Bengaluru and Hyderabad, which opened in 2008.
The contrast is dramatic. While the old metros languish, Bengaluru airport — India’s third busiest — saw air traffic surge by 21.6% in the 2025 vs. 2018 comparison. Hyderabad’s growth was even more robust at 27%.
This congestion on the ground is reflected in the skies. The Mumbai-Delhi route remains the nation’s busiest domestic corridor, with over 39,000 flights last year — averaging more than 100 flights daily in both directions. It accounts for 3.4% of all domestic flights, according to the International Air Transport Association (IATA). The Bengaluru-Delhi and Bengaluru-Mumbai routes follow as the second and third busiest.
How New Navi Mumbai, Jewar airports will break congestion?
The logjam, however, is set to be broken. The long-delayed Navi Mumbai airport and the upcoming Noida-Jewar airport for Delhi are poised to fundamentally redraw India’s air route map.
Their commissioning is expected to finally address the skewed demand-supply equation that has plagued air travel in the country’s two most populous urban agglomerations.
This expansion is critical for the nation's future. IATA, in its 'Aviation in India' report, has underscored that "investing in air transport infrastructure is essential to meet future passenger demand," noting the need to accommodate a projected threefold increase in traffic over the next two decades.
India’s aviation sector had previously experienced a double-digit average annual growth rate of 10.3% between 2011 and 2019, a performance that easily outpaced global and regional averages.
While the industry has broadly recovered from the pandemic's impact, the legacy airports of Mumbai and Delhi have remained conspicuously constrained and their growth stories have paused.
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