India prepares plan to double airports to 300 by 2047

India plans to more than double its airport count to 300 by 2047 on the back of an eightfold increase in passenger traffic, a draft plan made by the country's airport authority showed.

This will involve developing existing airstrips to full-scale airports and building new ones from scratch.

A draft plan prepared by the Airports Authority of India (AAI) showed that around 70 airstrips can be developed into full-fledged airports which can handle narrow-body aircraft such as A320 or B737 and nearly 40 airstrips can be developed to handle smaller aircraft.

Greenfield or new airports will be planned if an airstrip cannot be developed for any reason, or there is no civilian airport within a radius of 50 km. Currently, 138 airports are operational in India.

This is likely to include a mix of Greenfield airports and also development of existing civil enclaves into full-fledged operational airports.

The estimates are from AAI's draft National Airports Development Plan, which projects annual passenger traffic to grow from 376 million to 3-3.5 billion by 2047. Of this, 10-12 per cent may be international traffic.