The Times of India
Shreedhar Rathi
30 Mar 2026
For decades, the story of Indian aviation followed a predictable pattern. A city would have one airport. The airport would slowly expand. Passenger numbers would grow much faster than expected. Congestion would become normal. Eventually, planners would announce a major expansion that promised to solve the problem for the next decade. Then the cycle would repeat.
What is changing now is not just the scale of air travel, but the thinking behind how airports are planned. India is no longer building airports simply to solve present-day problems. It is building them in anticipation of a future in which a single airport will no longer be enough for a major city. The result is a quiet but important shift towards a dual-airport model...
