Noida Airport turns one month old, is it still flying half-empty?

Noida International Airport (NIA) completes a month of operations on Wednesday, and the numbers tell a mixed story: rising flight counts, but airlines already retreating from routes that failed to draw passengers, according to a TOI report by Saurabh Sinha.

The airport's biggest handicap has nothing to do with aviation and everything to do with geography. Sitting roughly 65 km from Noida Sector 18, NIA remains entirely dependent on cabs, and flyers with a choice are simply picking the better-connected IGI Airport instead, the report noted.

Also read: Noida International Airport: Here’s everything you need to know about India’s newest international airport


Add to that traveller unease about the quiet, poorly-lit stretches of Yamuna Expressway beyond Pari Chowk during early morning and night hours, and the picture becomes clearer: NIA isn't just competing for passengers, it's competing for convenience.

The airline exodus has begun

Air India Express, one of NIA's three launch carriers, has already walked away, a casualty of parent Air India's mounting losses, as per the TOI report. Akasa Air pulled its Bengaluru and Navi Mumbai routes just weeks after starting them on June 16, pivoting instead to a twice-daily NIA-Mumbai service. IndiGo, meanwhile, has consolidated its NCR presence almost entirely around NIA, with 105 weekly flights across 15 cities, but even it has cut the loss-making Noida-Chandigarh route, the report said.

Still, the trajectory is upward

According to the report, flight numbers have nearly tripled: from 86 flights and five cities in week one to 224 flights and 15 cities by week four. Daily passenger footfall has climbed from 1,427 on opening day to 2,797 by this Monday. Between June 15 and July 13, the airport moved over 36,000 departing and arriving passengers combined, with nearly 40% of total traffic coming from connecting travellers, a sign, the report suggested, that NIA is finding early traction as a transit hub, even if origin-destination traffic lags.

Help may be on the way

YEIDA is racing to fix the connectivity problem, the TOI report said. CEO R K Singh confirmed that NHAI's under-construction interchange linking the Eastern Peripheral Expressway with Yamuna Expressway near Dankaur is set to open on August 15, a development expected to ease access for commuters from Ghaziabad, Hapur and Bulandshahr. Singh, as quoted in the report, pegged current daily traffic at roughly 2,500-2,600 passengers across 13-14 daily flights each way, with growth expected.

A tough neighbourhood to break into

Per the report, NIA's challenge is structurally unusual: it's India's first case of a second airport opening in a metro where the first (IGIA) hasn't even hit full capacity yet. Hyderabad and Bengaluru's second airports didn't face this problem because the older airports there shut down entirely. IGIA, by contrast, remains a well-connected, affordable option, and isn't expected to saturate until 2030, when it approaches its 13-14 CPA ceiling (it handled under 8 crore passengers last year against an 11 CPA capacity), the report noted.

Compare that to Navi Mumbai International Airport, which, as the report pointed out, opened just six months before NIA with double the initial capacity (2 CPA versus NIA's 1.2 CPA) and doesn't compete with a saturated Mumbai CSMIA. NMIA has already crossed 23 lakh passengers, connects 46 domestic destinations, runs about 150 daily flights, and starts international operations this Wednesday.

Bad timing compounds the problem

NIA's launch also coincided with a rough patch for Indian carriers, the report said. The continued closure of Pakistani airspace since April has made lucrative western routes unviable, while the US-Iran conflict has pushed oil prices up and weakened the rupee, forcing airlines to scale back capacity broadly.

Also read: Noida International Airport begins commercial operations; first IndiGo flight from Lucknow to land at Jewar airport

"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," a senior airline official was quoted as saying in the TOI report, adding that the airport's initial struggle will largely track macroeconomic conditions rather than its own performance.

Notably, the report said speculation is already building around a potential stake sale, with private airport operators in India reportedly watching to see if concessionaire Zurich Airports offloads part of its holding, something it has done before, having exited a 5% stake in Bengaluru's Kempegowda International Airport to Fairfax Financial Holdings back in March 2017.

With inputs from TOI