A new highway link by August 15 could decide Noida airport’s fate

One month after Noida International Airport (NIA) began commercial flights, road connectivity has emerged as one of the biggest factors holding back its growth. The airport sits around 65 kilometres from Noida Sector 18 and depends almost entirely on cab travel, with passengers currently facing long, sparsely lit stretches of the Yamuna Expressway after crossing Pari Chowk during early morning and evening hours.

Yamuna Expressway Industrial Development Authority (YEIDA) has been working to address this directly. YEIDA CEO R K Singh said the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) is building an interchange connecting the Eastern Peripheral Expressway with the Yamuna Expressway near Dankaur, which is expected to open on August 15. ‘The interchange is expected to open on Aug 15, making travel to Noida airport easier for people from Ghaziabad, Hapur, Bulandshahr and nearby districts,’ Singh said. Lighting improvements along the expressway are also underway to address safety concerns.

The connectivity push comes as NIA’s flight numbers continue to build gradually. The airport handled 86 flights across 5 cities in its first week of operations and grew that to 224 flights across 15 cities by the fourth week. Daily passenger traffic rose from 1,427 on opening day to 2,797 this past Monday, with current terminal capacity matching that of Terminal 2 at Delhi’s IGI Airport. Singh said the airport now averages 13 to 14 outbound and inbound flights daily, with passenger traffic of roughly 2,500 to 2,600 a day and expected to keep climbing.

Between June 15 and July 13, NIA recorded 18,424 departures and 18,089 arrivals, along with 11,732 transfer passengers and 13,042 in-transit passengers, meaning close to 40% of total traffic came from travellers connecting through the airport rather than starting or ending their journeys in the region. Air India Express, one of the airport’s three launch carriers, has already withdrawn from NIA amid financial losses at parent Air India, while IndiGo has scaled back only its Noida-Chandigarh service for weak demand and continues to run 105 weekly flights to 15 cities from the airport.

NIA opened with a terminal designed for 1.2 crore passengers a year, a fraction of the capacity at Navi Mumbai International Airport, which started with a 2 crore-passenger terminal roughly 6 months earlier and has already carried more than 23 lakh passengers. Officials and airline executives expect NIA’s traffic to strengthen through the rest of the decade as connectivity projects such as the Dankaur interchange come online and as IGI Airport, currently handling under 8 crore passengers a year against an 11 crore capacity, moves closer to saturation.

[Source: Wikimedia Commons/Prime Minister’s Office, Government of India]