Delhi’s IGI and Mumbai Airport are two of the busiest airports in the country. The number of passengers at these airports is so much that the government has to construct two new airports at these cities, one in Jewar near Delhi and the other one in Navi Mumbai to ease the traffic of these two airports. However, the year 2019 was different for both of these airports as they saw fewer passengers in 2019 as compared to 2018. This dip in YoY passengers came after 11 years, as both of these airports had not seen a dip in passengers traffic for the last eleven years. There are multiple reasons as to why this has happened.
Reasons for Fall in Number of Air Passengers
One of the major reasons for the decline in passenger traffic at Delhi IGI and Mumbai airport was the closure of Jet Airways. One of the major carriers going bust in India led to a lot of issues in the aviation industry and the air traffic also took a dip. Another one of the other prime reasons was the closure of the Pakistani airspace for 138 days which led to cancellations of many flights. The technical snag of the P&W engines on GoAir and IndiGo flights was also one of the reasons why the airports saw a reduction in the number of passengers.
Delhi and Mumbai Both See Slump in Passenger Numbers
While the Delhi Airport saw a drop in domestic passengers, Mumbai airport saw a drop in both international and domestic air passengers. IGI, which is the bigger and also busier of the two airports, was just shy of 2 lakh passengers from the 7-crore figure of annual passengers. The airport saw 6.98 crore passengers pass through its doors. This was a 2.6% drop as compared to the previous year. On the other hand, Mumbai airport handled 4.7 crore passengers in 2019 as compared to 4.98 crore passengers in 2018 thus showing a slump of 5.6%.
