Hyderabad Airport becomes fourth busiest in the country

Compared to pre-Covid figures, the passenger traffic has recovered by over 97 per cent during 2022-23 and increased by 9 per cent

Hyderabad airport (File Photo | R Satish Babu)

HYDERABAD: Hyderabad airport has emerged as the fourth busiest airport in India in terms of annual passenger traffic from its earlier position of six after it witnessed more than 21 million passenger footprint during 2022-23. 

Among them, 17.6 million passengers were domestic and more than 3.4 MPPA were international. With this, air traffic movements (ATMs) showed an uptick. The total number of ATMs during the same period was 160,597 of which 137,640 were domestic ATMs and 22,957 international ATMs. 

Compared to pre-Covid figures (2019-20), passenger traffic has recovered by over 97 per cent during 2022-23. In fact, the traffic also increased from 13 per cent to 22 per cent in the year 2022-23.

The post-Covid growth in the destinations being connected from Rajiv Gandhi International Airport (RGIA) has been remarkable during 2022-23 as it has added three new domestic sectors. Hyderabad International Airport is now connected to over 70 domestic destinations, compared to 55 before Covid-19 outbreak. 

It is now connected to its earlier favourite destinations like Singapore, Qatar, Sharjah, Doha and Kuwait to name a few. Recently the Hyderabad-Colombo flight has resumed. A wide-body service to Singapore has been introduced. Dhaka, Baghdad and Don Mueang have been  added to the ever-growing list. 

Officials said Hyderabad has the potential to connect to multiple destinations in USA, Canada, Europe, Australia, Southeast Asia (Vietnam, Indonesia) and Africa (Ethiopia). The Hyderabad airport is exploring new destinations and hoping to increase further connectivity in the coming years. Currently, the focus is on connectivity to Chicago, New York, San Francisco, Dallas, Frankfurt and Paris, to name a few.

To further strengthen and facilitate the hub and spoke operations for airlines, RGIA is increasing its capacity from the current 12 million passengers per annum to 34 million passengers per annum with an integrated domestic and international terminal under a single roof.

New tunnel:
To ensure safe operations and  seamless baggage and passenger movement, a new tunnel has been built to minimize the time loss during the crisscross movement of Ground Service Equipment (GSE) vehicles and aircraft. The GSE tunnel connects the 24 new remote aircraft stands and 18 existing remote stands on the east side of the airport to contact stands and the expanding passenger terminal.