‘The perfect storm’: Noida’s new airport is surviving a brutal first month

Noida International Airport (NIA) at Jewar completed its first month of operations this week under conditions one senior airline official described starkly: ‘Noida Airport has set sail amid the perfect storm. The first few years are going to be tough, but the long-term prospects are sound.’ The remark captures a month in which flight numbers have grown steadily even as one of the airport’s three launch carriers has already withdrawn.

Air India Express exited NIA as parent carrier Air India works through mounting financial losses, while Akasa Air has temporarily suspended the Bengaluru and Navi Mumbai routes it began on June 16, replacing them with a twice-daily NIA-Mumbai CSMIA service. IndiGo has taken a different path, building out 105 weekly flights to 15 cities including twice-daily Lucknow and Jaipur connections, and has trimmed only its Noida-Chandigarh route for weak demand.

The broader pressure on Indian airlines is not unique to NIA. Carriers across the country have been scaling back international routes because of the closure of Pakistani airspace since last April, rising oil prices tied to the US-Iran war, and a weakening rupee — all landing at the same time as NIA tries to establish itself as Delhi-NCR’s second international airport.

Even so, the airport’s growth curve is moving upward. Weekly flights rose from 86 covering 5 cities at launch to 224 covering 15 cities by the fourth week, and daily passenger traffic climbed from 1,427 on opening day to 2,797 this past Monday. Between June 15 and July 13, NIA handled 18,424 departures, 18,089 arrivals, 11,732 transfer passengers and 13,042 in-transit passengers, with close to 40% of total traffic made up of connecting travellers.

Yamuna Expressway Industrial Development Authority (YEIDA) CEO R K Singh said daily flights now number 13 to 14 in each direction, with average daily passenger traffic of 2,500 to 2,600 expected to keep rising, helped by a new NHAI interchange near Dankaur linking the Eastern Peripheral Expressway to the Yamuna Expressway, due to open on August 15. Industry watchers also note that private airport operators are already positioning themselves in case concessionaire Zurich Airports offloads part of its NIA stake, as it did at Bengaluru’s Kempegowda International Airport in March 2017.

[Source: Wikimedia Commons/Prime Minister’s Office, Government of India]