Indian aviation has a habit of doubling its passenger count roughly every ten years. It happened between 2005 and 2015, again between 2009 and 2019, and now between 2015 and 2025. The pattern has held even as airlines have shut down, economic cycles have turned, and the industry has absorbed shocks both short and long term.
Domestic footfalls stood at 16,92,93,015 (16.93 crore) in FY2015-16. A footfall counts every passenger who arrives at or departs from an airport, so it isn’t simply double the number of departing passengers alone: some passengers arrive domestically and then fly out on an international leg, and get counted under international footfalls instead. By FY2025-26, domestic footfalls had reached 33,94,47,860 (33.94 crore), just over double the 2015-16 base. New airports opening, and existing ones adding capacity, drove this: Delhi added terminal capacity and a new runway, Bengaluru got a new terminal and runway, and Hyderabad expanded its terminal.
Over half of India’s domestic passengers fly out of one of six metro airports: Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chennai and Kolkata. When the country as a whole doubled its footfalls, did the metros keep pace, and if so, which ones led? The six metros together grew 76%, impressive given how large their base already was. In absolute terms, national footfalls rose from 16.93 crore to 33.94 crore, while the six metros rose from 11 crore to 19.4 crore, an addition of 8.4 crore passengers over the decade. The growth, though, was far from even.
From four metros to six
India’s metro club used to have just four members: Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata. Bengaluru and Hyderabad joined later, pushed along by the IT and services boom, and both got greenfield airports built to match. By 2015-16, these two airports had already absorbed much of the pent up demand that built up before they opened, though plenty of room remained.
The decade that followed was also one of changing aircraft gauge. IndiGo led the shift from A320s to A321s, adding roughly 40 seats a flight, and Vistara and Air India added capacity wherever they could. That shift explains a good part of why some airports grew mainly through bigger aircraft rather than more of them.
At the other end of the gauge spectrum, the decade was also when regional aviation had its moment in the south. TruJet operated through this period, IndiGo built a large ATR network based out of Hyderabad and Bengaluru, and SpiceJet’s Q400 fleet rose and then declined. These smaller aircraft, flying more frequently, shaped growth differently at the southern metros than the bigger jets did at Delhi and Mumbai.
Hyderabad and Bengaluru pull away
Hyderabad gained the most of any metro, growing 2.7 times, from 92.30 lakh domestic footfalls in 2015-16 to 2.50 crore in 2025-26. That took it from sixth position to fourth, past both Kolkata and Chennai. Bengaluru wasn’t far behind, growing about 2.4 times, from 1.56 crore to 3.72 crore. Bengaluru had roughly half of Mumbai’s traffic a decade ago; last year it was within 5% of it. Once Navi Mumbai International Airport ramps up, Bengaluru will likely overtake Mumbai on a standalone basis, even though Mumbai as a city will stay ahead once both its airports are counted together.
Mumbai itself grew only 30% in ten years, a number that reflects a runway and terminal that have simply run out of room to expand. Already the world’s busiest single runway airport, Mumbai’s growth came almost entirely from airlines deploying bigger aircraft rather than more flights. Delhi, still India’s largest airport, grew 67% and held on to its top spot. Its terminals are now rated for 100 million passengers a year, and even as airside work continues, it closed last year at around 77 million passengers (domestic and international combined), leaving roughly 23 million passengers of headroom.
Chennai and Kolkata, the two metro airports still under government ownership, grew 63% and 77% respectively, and both had room for more, particularly Chennai, which increasingly competes with Bengaluru and Hyderabad for the same traffic. Both airports slipped a rank each as Hyderabad moved up.
The metros’ combined share of India’s domestic footfalls fell from 65% in 2015-16 to 57.2% in 2025-26. At the airport level, Delhi’s share fell from 20.2% to 16.8%, and Mumbai’s from 17.7% to 11.5%; Kolkata and Chennai slipped more modestly, from 6.3% to 5.5% and 6.1% to 5% respectively. Only Hyderabad and Bengaluru bucked the trend: Hyderabad’s share rose from 5.5% to 7.4%, and Bengaluru’s from 9.2% to 11%. That split tracks a broader shift in regional aviation toward the south, where growth in flights has consistently outpaced growth in passengers, the opposite of what happened at Delhi and Mumbai, where passenger growth outpaced flights, a sign of capacity added through bigger aircraft rather than more of them.
Network Thoughts
The harder problem in Indian skies has always been profitability, not growth. IndiGo (as InterGlobe Aviation) listed on the NSE and BSE on 10 November 2015, and remains the only major carrier from that era still trading; Kingfisher Airlines shut down in 2012 and Jet Airways in 2019. [Add your own figures here on IndiGo’s profit and loss across the decade, including how the pandemic years compare with the periods before and after it.]
As talk turns to more airports, more airlines, and possibly a Final Assembly Line for aircraft, the better goal might be slower, profitable growth that can actually sustain itself, rather than another round of capacity chasing subsidy or sentiment.
The passenger has often paid for that chase. Someone used to a 2,000 rupee domestic fare before the pandemic is now paying nearly three times that on many routes, a cost that rarely gets discussed with the same enthusiasm as the traffic numbers.
Found this article informative? Think of supporting Network Thoughts with Power of 10
Running this website incurs some cost, along with the data sourced for analytics. If you have liked this article, consider paying INR 10 via UPI. The site will continue to be free. This will help with the maintenance, upkeep and funding the research. You can also pay via Debit or Credit card by clicking on this link.
You can support Network Thoughts by ordering Network Thoughts baggage tags and lapel pins !
Follow NetworkThoughts on X (Formerly Twitter), Bsky, Facebook and YouTube