India: Airports starting to strain as passenger numbers surge

India’s airports are struggling to cope with a massive surge in passengers and tens of billions of rupees must be spent to boost their capacity, analysts have warned. The country is witnessing a huge boom in air travel as its growing middle class increasingly takes to the skies but experts say infrastructure is failing to keep up. “There’s an urgent need for capacity building in major Indian airports as they are bursting at the seams and close to saturation,” said Binit Somaia, South Asia Director at the Centre for Aviation (CAPA). India has seen a six-fold increase in passenger numbers over the past decade as people take advantage of better connectivity and cheaper fares thanks to a host of low-cost airlines. Indian airports handled 265m domestic passengers in 2016 and will cross 300m this year, according to CAPA. The country’s entire airport network is only capable of handling 317m passengers, it says. According to data compiled by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), an Indian regulatory body, there were just 44m Indians travelling by plane in 2008. CAPA predicts India will have 478m fliers by 2036. Aviation experts say the government faces a race against time to build the infrastructure to handle the soaring congestion. “Some top airports have reached saturation. In the next five to seven years, the top 30 to 40 airports in India will be performing beyond their capacity,” said Somaia of the Sydney-based CAPA.<br/>