India: Airports will be at breaking point by 2022

Air travel in India is growing at an incredible pace. The bad news? Its airports can't keep up. The country's biggest hubs are already operating at 70% of capacity, with New Delhi and Mumbai at more than 80%, according to a new report by the Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation. Passenger numbers are likely to exceed capacity by 2022, it said. Just six airports -- Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, Chennai, Kolkata and Hyderabad -- handle two thirds of the country's air traffic, according to government data. Mumbai is already "close to saturation" and is expected to hit its maximum capacity by 2019, CAPA said. Those cities have earmarked around $5b over the coming years for expansion, or to build second airports, but that's only a fraction of how much they will need to avoid bursting at the seams. CAPA estimates India will need to invest as much as $45b on top of that by 2030. Bangalore, for example, received 2.9m passengers more in the last fiscal year than it is currently built to handle, and is planning to double its 20m capacity over the next three years. Nearly a dozen smaller airports "are already operating beyond" their maximum capacity, the CAPA report added. The numbers indicate a looming crisis for India's aviation market, which is projected to overtake the UK as the world's third largest by 2026. Around 265m passengers passed through Indian airports in the last fiscal year, a number that CAPA projects will rise to nearly 300m by 2018. India is currently equipped to handle a maximum of 317m passengers. Mumbai airport is expected to hit capacity in 2019. Once the planned airport expansions take place, India's maximum capacity will be 463m. But passenger numbers are projected to continue rising to nearly 700m by 2027.<br/>