Bengaluru’s Kempegowda International Airport has recently become the third busiest international airport in India by passenger footfall, trailing only Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport and Mumbai’s Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport.
BLR surpassed competition from within South India by Chennai and Kochi to earn the third spot after producing record numbers in the month of October 2024.
Top 5 busiest airports in India
Delhi leads the charts for being the busiest international airport in India by passenger traffic. The Indian capital served 17.5 lakh travellers last month and is followed by the financial hub, Mumbai, which had 12.5 lakh passengers travel through its Terminal 2.
Bengaluru was significantly behind both the cities but ranked third after serving 4.8 lakh overseas travellers, leading Chennai and Kochi in the process, as they had 4.5 lakh and 4.1 lakh travellers flying overseas, respectively.
In domestic passenger traffic also BLR takes third place behind Delhi and Mumbai.
While Delhi and Mumbai served 46.8 lakh and 31.8 lakh passengers respectively in October 2024, Bangalore had a footfall of 30.8 lakh domestic travellers.
Bengaluru T2 and new runway
Bengaluru Airport opened a new terminal last year, the T2, which is a state-of-the-art facility and has significantly bolstered traffic in the city in Karnataka.
Currently, 34 airlines operate flights to 29 destinations from BLR. It is foreseen that Akasa Air and IndiGo will spread its wings to Abu Dhabi, Langkawi and Kuala Lumpur imminently as well.
Apart from T2, a new runway also opened in Bengaluru for streamlining the traffic into the airport and provide for smooth operation. The second runway, designated as 09R/27L was commissioned in October 2018 and construction was complete a year later in December 2019.
Unlike its competitors, Mumbai, Chennai and Kochi, having parallel runways could exponentially work in Bangalore Airport’s favour in the future.
