Six Runways, Two Airports, One City: Can Delhi-NCR Make It Work?

Whether Delhi-NCR becomes a dual-hub market or a city with competing airports will depend on connectivity, demand and sustained policy support.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrived at Jewar by helicopter on 28 March 2026, landed at a gleaming new apron 72 kilometres south-east of Delhi, and walked into a terminal that did not exist four years ago. The inauguration of the Noida International Airport marked the end of a construction sprint that cost roughly Rs 10,050 crore.

Delhi now has two international airports. The question now is whether that arrangement produces a genuinely larger market or simply splits the existing one.

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IGI handled 79.2 million passengers in the 2024–25 financial year, ranking it among the nine busiest airports in the world, and its operator was already drawing up expansion plans for 125 million by the time Jewar’s gates opened. Jewar starts smaller, with a single 3,900-metre runway and a Phase 1 terminal rated for 12 million passengers annually, projected to increase to 70 to even 100 million after completion of all phases.

If both airports reach numbers approaching those, the NCR would have more combined capacity than the London system. Whether the economics, the regulatory framework, and the surface infrastructure are in any shape to support that trajectory is considerably less certain.

The Demand Is Not In Dispute

IGI has been running close to its limits for several years. The revamped Terminal 2 returned to service in October 2025, carrying roughly 15 million passengers per year, bringing combined terminal capacity across the three buildings to around 105 million annually. Even at that level, the airport was handling 79 million actual passengers in FY25, and DIAL was simultaneously advancing plans to extend capacity to 125 million by 2029–30.

Delhi-NCR’s air traffic has grown, and the numbers follow a demand curve that has been running well ahead of India’s ability to accommodate it. Delhi-NCR’s air traffic has grown by 8 to 9 per cent annually. It has been sustained by rising incomes, corporate expansion along the Yamuna Expressway corridor,........

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