But experts say a slew of factors are muzzling Indian airports and need to be addressed first – be it a hybrid till strategy, a few dominant private players, or the lack of foreign flights even at designated international airports.

Airport Operators

Currently, India has four private players who manage 16 airports.

Adani Airports Holding Limited is the largest private sector operator with eight airports in Mumbai, Navi Mumbai, Lucknow, Guwahati, Thiruvananthapuram, Jaipur, Ahmedabad, and Mangaluru. GMR Airports Limited manages five airports – Delhi, Hyderabad, Mopa (Goa), Nagpur, Bidar, and Bhogapuram, while Zurich Airport International AG manages Noida Airport, and Fairfax India Holdings manages the Bengaluru Airport.

In July 2026-27, Indian airports handled 63.3 lakh international passengers and 243 lakh domestic passengers, adding to a total of 306.3 lakh flyers.

An aviation veteran with over four decades of leadership-level experience in India and globally says the government can and should, through progressive policies, create a well-balanced ecosystem that protects the interests of all stakeholders, irrespective of whether they have a collective bargaining body to plead their case. 

“In this context, the government would do well to quickly establish a robust technical and economic regulatory framework and should ensure no stakeholder transcends the boundary of fairness and equity,” he told The Secretariat.

Revenue Streams

Satyendra Pandey, Managing Partner, Aairavat Technology & Transport Ventures Private Ltd, breaks it down. India's airports earn revenue across two broad categories — aeronautical and non-aeronautical. Aeronautical charges include landing fees, parking, and passenger service fees.

“The country follows a hybrid till policy where a percentage of the non-aero revenues are used to cross-subsidise aero revenues. Several quarters echo the sentiment that a single till strategy would have been better to keep airport charges in check. With a hybrid till strategy, the economic upside for an airport is almost entirely a function of how aggressively it monetises the non-aero revenue,” Pandey says.

Sidharath Kapur, Founder and Board Member, Refex Airports and Transport Pvt Ltd, and Board Member, Jewar Airport, NOIDA, adds another stream: real estate. 

“Aeronautical revenues are regulated by the independent body, Airports Economic Regulatory Authority (AERA). So, if an airport operator increases aeronautical revenues, say in ground handling activities at a particular airport, they will be forced to reduce some other aeronautical charges because there is a fixed target revenue for aeronautical charges,” he argues.

Besides, there are non-aeronautical and real estate development revenue streams that the airport operator can tap into. “The percentage of airport land that can be used for real estate development is mandated in the Request for Proposals that are put out for a particular airport. Typically, an airport operator will develop an airport city where commercial offices, hotels, malls, retail shops, among other establishments, will come up,” Kapur told The Secretariat.

Airports With International Airlines

An airport from which several international airlines operate can be at an advantage in terms of revenue, as various studies have shown there is a significant gap between revenue generated from a domestic passenger and that from an international traveller.

“The revenue from international passengers is higher because of spending and duty-free purchases. It can be as high as 50%-100% more than a domestic passenger's revenue. Incidentally, the 50%-100% increase in international revenue versus domestic passenger revenue is a global phenomenon and not restricted to India,” Kapur points out.

A Handful Of Players

The GMR Group in its annual report noted a consolidated profit after tax of ₹472 crore in FY2025-26, as compared to a loss of ₹816.9 crore in the previous year. 

G.M. Rao, Chairman of the company, said in the report that GMR-managed airports saw 11.46 crore passengers in the last fiscal year, representing almost 25.6% of international and 33.9% of domestic traffic. 

The company said that fiscal 2025-26 marked a significant step-change in GMR Airports Ltd’s financial performance. “Gross income grew 40% to ₹15,200.8 crore, while Net Income increased 43% to ₹11,757.2 crore, supported by the revised aeronautical tariffs at Delhi International Airport and continued scaling of the company’s non-aeronautical business. EBITDA, or Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortisation, reached a record ₹6,150.3 crore, up 47% year-on-year.”

Arun Bansal, CEO, Adani Airport Holding Ltd, in the annual report for FY2025-26, notes a 34% growth in revenue from operations to ₹10.387 crore, with EBITDA growing 50% to ₹6,481 crore. 

Addressing Monopolistic Practices

Pandey is of the view that regulators need to address monopolistic practices at Indian airports. 

“Structurally, key traffic drivers are the metro cities of Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chennai and Kolkata. The numbers for the last financial year indicate that, of these, GMR controls 43.5% of traffic (Delhi and Hyderabad), Adani Airports 22.1% (Mumbai & Navi Mumbai), AAI (Chennai and Kolkata) 17.7% and Fairfax (Bengaluru) 16.8%,” he says. 

“However, within each city, the airport is a monopoly, as secondary airports are only now coming up, and there too there are challenges,” he says. Ironically, “airline profitability and airport profitability are structurally in tension. Every rupee of landing fee, user development fee, or ground handling margin that an airport charges compresses airline unit economics at that station. IndiGo has raised this explicitly in relation to certain tariff orders”.

The airport veteran adds that the oligopolistic nature of civil aviation demands that the airport sector is not monopolised by a few private sector players. 

“India has already witnessed the ugly face of a near monopoly of one airline ruling the roost in the recent past. In fact, India is still reeling under the pains of the misdeeds of that airline enjoying a near monopoly in the airline space. Though the impact may be less severe in the airport sector compared to the airline sector, monopoly or duopoly is not desirable in my view either, simply because it can eventually end up in a situation that is not in the interest of the passengers and operating airlines,” the veteran argues.

Kapur prefers to use the term “dominant player” rather than monopoly. “If an airport operator has multiple airports in one particular country, then they can structure airline traffic around their bundled airports there by optimising and maximising traffic around their airports,” he points out.

He says there are only a handful of countries, including India, the UK, and Australia, where so many airports are in the hands of a few players. “In most countries, either the government or some independent body appointed by the government ensures that airports do not pass into the hands of a few,” he says, adding that news reports suggest that in the next round of privatising 11 airports, the government is planning to cap the number of airports that a single bidder will be allowed to take over.

What Government Can Do

The government can – and as is being planned in the next round of privatisation – limit the number of airports that a single entity can own. This should ensure fair play in pricing and not see a major airport operator who owns a clutch of airports give better rates to airlines if they operate more flights to their airport compared to other airports.

Pandey sums it up well when he says new greenfield projects — Navi Mumbai, Jewar, Bhogapuram, Mopa — will test whether new credible operators can be cultivated or whether the market gravitates further toward the same hands. The financial structuring of several upcoming concessions suggests the government is aware of this, but the corrective is not yet visible in bid conditions.

International Airports, But No Foreign Airlines?

OAG, the leading data platform for the global travel industry, points out that based on the latest data from the Ministry of Civil Aviation, India has 36 airports classified as international as of 7 July this year, including Joint Venture (JV) airports.

But there is at least one airport in Kerala – Kannur – which has been granted international status by the Union Cabinet and inaugurated in the presence of the Union Civil Aviation Minister about a decade ago. But it is still waiting to receive a flight by a foreign airline even though Indian airlines operate foreign flights to and from this airport. 

This is not a lone instance. There are many airports around the country with the same story, like Srinagar and Tirupati, to name just two.

Mayur Patel, Regional Commercial and Industry Affairs Leader, OAG, puts this in perspective by pointing out that India's aviation debate tends to focus on how many airports carry international status. “The more revealing question is how many are genuinely connected.” 

“Of the 36 international-designated airports, OAG's 2026 schedules show only 26 with a scheduled international service. A designation is a starting point, not an outcome. Connectivity follows demand, viable routes, and airline commitment, which is why India's international traffic still concentrates in a handful of metros. The strategic task ahead is not designating more gateways, but building the demand and route economics that turn a status into sustained connectivity," he says.  

(The writer is a senior civil aviation journalist. Views expressed are personal.)