Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi. Photo: Yuan Jirong/People's Daily

New Delhi (People's Daily) - Major airports in India such as Delhi, Mbmbai and Chennai will exceed its maximum traffic capacity by 2022 as increasing number of passengers flocking in.

Other airports like Agartala have already been operating beyond their design capacity.

Kapil Kaul, CEO and director of CAPA-South Asia, described such scenario as a “near-crisis situation”. And to accommodate the surging traffic, experts forecast that 55 airports, covering a total of 150,000 to 200,000 acres of land, are need by 2030, the India Times reported on November 12.

And for Indian airlines, the current biggest challenge is how to secure arrival/departure time slots and parking bays, said the report.

Kual was quoted as saying in the report that “India’s response to such a crisis is inadequate.” The country needs to construct new airports to handle an additional 500-600 million passengers by 2030. All of this will need $35 billion to $45 billion of investment, Kual continued.

Over the last three years, Indian domestic passenger traffic has grown at a rate of 18.9 percent, rising from 61 million to 103 million. India is now the third largest air traffic market in the world.