Flight movements at KIA close in on pre-Covid levels

Trends in air traffic movement to and from Bengaluru remained upward as 2022 drew to a close and has almost hit pre-Covid numbers, an official report on traffic flow management in the country’s airports said.

The Central Air Traffic Flow Management (CATFM) said, in a post-ops analysis of the month of December 2022, that the Kempegowda International Airport (KIA) recorded 98 per cent of the average daily flight movement which was recorded in December 2019. KIA recorded the third highest average daily movement among the country’s six major airports, behind Delhi and Mumbai (figures in box).

The monthly CATFM analysis, the last before the airport in Bengaluru opened its second terminal, placed the airport on top in terms of ATM recovery over the past three years, ahead of Mumbai (97.6 per cent), Delhi (93.9 per cent), Hyderabad (79.5 per cent), Kolkata (76.5 per cent) and Chennai (70.4 per cent). The Airports Authority of India established the CATFM system to streamline air traffic movement by balancing the traffic volumes with the airports’ capabilities.

	Dec 2019	Dec 2020	Dec 2021	Dec 2022
Bengaluru	670	469	566	656
Delhi	1371	894	1247	1287
Hyderabad	556	351	388	444
Kolkata	503	294	382	382
Mumbai	908	523	765	887
Chennai	497	283	342	350

The highest daily movements at KIA during December were recorded around Christmas (690, on December 23) and the New Year’s (686 and 683, on December 29 and 30, respectively).

At 656 average daily movements in December, the airport also recorded a 5.3 per cent jump on the daily average number during the previous month, again the highest among the country’s six major airports.

Mumbai and Hyderabad (both registering a 5 per cent monthly increase), Chennai (3.2 per cent) and Delhi (1.3 per cent) stayed on the growth course while Kolkata recorded a 2.3 per cent dip in the average daily movements.