Mumbai airport beats Delhi in overseas traffic

Delhi boasts of being the busiest airport in the country, but Mumbai still retains the edge as far as international passengers are concerned.

According to data from the Airports Authority of India (AAI), the Mumbai International Airport saw more international passenger traffic than Delhi in the first nine months of this fiscal.

Between April and December 2010, 66.93 lakh international passengers traversed through the Delhi International Airport (DIAL), while the traffic in Mumbai during the same period was 67.75 lakh.

In fact, the year-on-year growth in international traffic at Mumbai was also at a slightly faster clip of 11.1% against 10.5% at Delhi.
In the domestic case, however, Delhi remains the clear winner.

Delhi saw over 1.5 crore passengers, whereas Mumbai had to be content with a little over 1.48 crore. This was despite the fact that domestic traffic at Mumbai grew at a faster clip of 4.3% year-on-year, whereas the growth was only 13.4% for the DIAL.

It is interesting to note that though Delhi retains the number one slot in combined traffic figures, it has again fallen behind Mumbai in terms of total traffic for December last year.

While 27.1 lakh passengers, international as well as domestic, used the Delhi airport in December, the figure was 27.36 lakh for Mumbai.

Could this perhaps be due to persistent fears of the famous Delhi fog, which holds up numerous flights and causes severe delays between December and January each year?

As per AAI figures, overall traffic growth across all airports in the country between April and December this year was a healthy 15.1%.

For the first time, total passengers using Indian airports crossed the 10-crore mark to settle at 10.55 crore in the nine month period under review, against 9.17 crore in the same period of previous fiscal.

Among the 17 international airports across India, Cochin International Airport witnessed the maximum passenger growth this fiscal at 52.8%, with Guwahati a distant second at 21.7%.