Chennai airport pushed to fourth spot in handling international air passengers as Bengaluru races ahead

Once a gateway to south India holding a large share of air traffic, Chennai airport has now lost its identity of being third busiest airport in the country in handling international air passengers to Bengaluru.

According to the data released by Airports Authority of India (AAI) for the month of October, Bengaluru airport has raced ahead and pushed Chennai airport behind to the fourth position. While Bengaluru airport recorded 4,89,871 international passengers during October and saw a growth of 24.3 percent when compared to October 2023, Chennai airport witnessed 4,53,134 international passengers and saw a dip of 1.8 percent this month when compared to October 2023.

Chennai airport gradually began losing out on passenger traffic nearly a decade ago to Bengaluru when the latter became the third busiest airport (both in domestic and international passenger traffic) in the country. This is primarily due to a slump on the domestic air passenger growth and the Chennai airport still continued to be the third busiest in the country with respect to handling international air passenger traffic until now.

Today, Chennai airport fallen to the sixth spot behind Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad and even Kolkata (in the total air passenger traffic handled).

Officials of Airports Authority of India (AAI) said, they have been taking as many initiatives as possible to boost the air traffic at the airport. “But we should understand that AAI has been operating with space constraints unlike the private airports. We are struggling with limited availability of land. If we could expand more then, we can also add more aerobridges,” an official said.

Officials also pointed out crucial moves like bringing in more airlines for the city to other destinations and reducing the Value Added Tax on the aviation turbine fuel (ATF) lies with the Union government and the State government respectively. “The decision to add connectivity from Chennai airport to any other city in the world is taken by the Centre. Also, one of the most important factors that an airline considers is the VAT in a State. Tamil Nadu levies one of the highest VAT for ATF and this heavily increases the operational cost for an airline,” he added.   

But a source said, authorities said should have aggressively promoted a metro airport like Chennai akin to the private airports. “Over the last decade, the various developmental work has been taken up at the airport and were all of it completed on time? This too contributes to pushing the airport behind. Till today, the airport hasn’t managed to touch the pre-COVID aircraft movement,” he added.

Published - November 28, 2024 12:39 am IST