NEW DELHI: The overall number of flyers, both domestic and international, across the country has gone down by over 4.5% in July 2026 compared to the same period last year, states the Airports Authority of India (AAI). Freight traffic though has shot up by nearly 11%
AAI on Friday made public the Air Traffic Report for July. A total of 2.43 crore people travelled within India in July this year as compared to 2.55 crore passengers in July 2025. This marks a dip in patronage by 4.7% across India. Delhi is the only airport among the major airports to have shown positive domestic growth.
The international dip is also somewhat similar, with respect to the percentage. A total of 63.3 lakh flyers travelled abroad last month when compared to 66.3 lakh flyers, marking a decline by about 4.6%. The data for the ongoing financial year from April to July 2026 shows a decrease of 1.6% in passengers, from 10.48 crore flyers now, when compared to 10.64 from April to July 2025.
Only Bengaluru (a 5.5% increase), Delhi (4%), Hyderabad (0.4%), Mangaluru (8.5%), and Nasik have shown an increase in passenger traffic in July, out of the 52 airports which have international operations in the country. The rest of the airports have recorded a reduced patronage, with a substantial decrease over the previous year, recorded by Madurai, Surat, Tiruchirappalli, Bhubaneswar, Guwahati, Jaipur and Nagpur airports.
Among domestic airports, patronage in Ayodhya has declined by a whopping 45.7% in July 2026 when compared to July 2025 (1,24,579 passengers versus 1,40,592 passengers)
Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport is the only among major airports to record an increase in flyers by about 3.5%. It had 43,16,285 passengers in July 2026 as against 41,68,711 in July 2025.
The other leading ones have shown negative growth. Bengaluru airport has shown a 5% decline (27,23,911 vs 28,66,480 flyers); Hyderabad showed a massive 12% dip in patronage (17,43,5554 vs 19,80,692 flyers) while Mumbai slipped by 14.6% (2614261 vs 3062130 flyers) and Chennai fell by 14% (11,63,893 vs 13,54,143 flyers).
Rajkot, Thiruvananthapuram, Bagdogra, Kochi, Chandigarh, Pune, Shillong, Begumpet, Adampur (Jalandhar) are among the few airports which have recorded a positive growth on the domestic front.