A leading data travel provider Official Airline Guide (OAG), in its recent report, has said that Delhi's Indra Gandhi Airport (IGI) has emerged as the world's second busiest airport in March in terms of domestic and international flights.
"Whilst Atlanta retains its position as largest, Dubai is knocked out of second place this month (March) by Delhi International Airport—with a seating capacity of 3,611,181 seats—which moves up from third place last month (February)," the OAG's report said.
The Delhi airport handled about 31.61 million domestic passengers and 5.49 million international traffic in 2021. It emerged as the top-most among all Indian airports in terms of handling domestic as well as international passenger traffic in CY 2020 and CY 2021.
In March this year, the airport handled 3.61 million seats, the OAG report said. The airport was on 23rd place in March 2019 before the pandemic, the report further added.
The airport registered 67,301,016 passengers in 2019. During 2020, it handled 28,500,545 passengers, an important decrease caused by the impact of pandemic restrictions, the airport claimed on its website.
Videh Kumar Jaipuriar, CEO, Delhi Airport International Limited (DIAL), said, "COVID-19 pandemic had hit the world hard. Travel restrictions had badly affected the travel and tourism sectors for two consecutive years."
But now, with the rise in the number of vaccinated people across the world, governments are easing travel restrictions and slowly opening up their borders, Jaipuriar added.
"India has last month opened its borders and allowed the entry of fully vaccinated international travellers into the country, he said.
