Hyderabad Airport touches 3-mn mark, 2nd best in India

Hyderabad: As the passenger footfall grows steadily by leaps and bounds and confidence in air travel is rising, the worst has passed. With new hope and vigour, the operations at the GMR Hyderabad International Airport are normalising and the number of passengers in a single day has touched 37,000 mark for domestic operations post lockdown November.

With the relaxation of quarantine norms by both the central and the state governments under the Unlock 5.0, Indian aviation sector is gaining strength steadily. The guidelines on the medical profile of the passengers and RT-PCR medical report are still the ask by many states. Thanks to the new Covid-19 testing facility available in collaboration with Mapmygenome, an ICMR and NABL certified lab at Hyderabad Airport, it is making air travel the safer.

The lab will operate 24/7 for passengers and airport personnel. Passengers can avail of the test at the immigration level or the forecourt of Interim International Departures Terminal. The latter may be used by those departing passengers who may be required by the destination country to carry negative RT-PCR Test report.

From about 3000 domestic passengers daily in the first few weeks post recommencement of domestic operations from 25th May onwards, now the passenger footfall has increased to over 30,000 daily in November 2020, which is over 10 times from the re-start. The airport has handled over 3 million domestic passengers with over 35,000 domestic flights since the restart. The number of domestic passengers in a single day touched 37,000 mark recently, the highest since the restart of domestic operations.

Hyderabad has also seen uptick in the Air Traffic Movement (ATM) from about 40 daily ATMs in the first few weeks of the restart, to over six times growth having handled over 260 domestic flights daily in November 2020. The ATM also crossed 284 mark on a single day in November.

Hyderabad airport has regained its 51 destinations out of pre-covid 55 domestic destinations. With three new domestic destinations–Kozhikode, Imphal and Jagdalpur, RGIA is now connected to 54 destinations in the domestic sector.

The top 5 destinations during post-covid time are: Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai, Bengaluru and Mumbai.

Initially, the airport observed unidirectional traffic due to pent-up demand, however, now the demand is gradually back to both-ways. Top 3 airlines that are serving the domestic traffic from Hyderabad airport continue to be IndiGo, SpiceJet and Air India.

In October, Hyderabad airport extended its indigenously developed digital solution of E-boarding services to international flights, becoming the first airport in India to do so.