Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGIA), Delhi, India’s largest and busiest airport, closed 2025 with 78 million passengers, just 0.4% more than the previous year. It clocked 78,148,081 passengers in 2025, data released by Groupe ADP, which had a stake in GMR Aviation, the airport focused company of the GMR group. This traffic is 14% more than pre-COVID times.
The flattish numbers were a combination of issues, starting with a runway closure which had to be halted mid-way in the first part of 2025 and restarted later, followed by Operation Sindoor when airports in North India were closed for a few days and tourism to Jammu and Kashmir took a hit. Overall traffic was further impacted post crash of AI171 and airlines had scaled back the capacity as passengers stayed away, which also coincided with the relatively weaker months in Indian aviation.
Delhi Airport started full fledged operations at Terminal 1 in 2025, along with reinstating Terminal 2, making the operational capacity up to 100 million passengers. However, the modernisation at both airside and terminal side has meant that the true potential of the airport has not been realised yet with 20% capacity on the terminal side being available for use right now.
What next?
Delhi airport may see another runway work period this year which will lead to trimming of capacity for a shorter period. Additional one out of two domestic piers at Terminal 3 are being converted to international, which will make it three international piers at Terminal 3 and one domestic. This will help with increased revenue per user for the airport as it can dole out more international movements, which are currently not possible due to limited terminal space.
This will enable Delhi Airport to connect to new cities and offer better slots to carriers as more bays become available for use. International movements give higher revenue to airports, and give additional earning opportunity on non-aero revenue like duty free from passengers as well.
It needs to be seen if Delhi Airport has made it to top 10 in 2025 or the flattish traffic has led the airport to lose out of top 10 where it was ninth position in 2024.
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