At 132%, Mumbai airport passenger traffic sees vertical climb in 1st half of 2022 | Mumbai News – Times of India

MUMBAI: Close to 17 million flyers passed through Mumbai airport in the first half of this year-a 132% jump in passenger traffic as compared to the first six months of 2021, said Mumbai International Airport Ltd (MIAL) on Tuesday. International passenger traffic has been on a steady rise as well, with the airport handling 3.5 million passengers between January and June, a jump of 97 % as compared to the previous year. The busiest month for travel since the Covid-19 outbreak was May when summer vacations had around 4 million passengers arrive or depart through the city airport. The highest single-day traffic was registered on May 21 with 1.2 lakh passengers. For the past two years, international airline flight operations were curtailed due to the pandemic. Airlines’ scheduled flights resumed on March 27 and international passenger traffic has been on a rise since then. The airport handled 8.3 lakh international passengers in June-a 124% jump compared to January. “The strong revival of operations in 2022 signals the sector steadily moving towards healthy operations as observed in the pre-Covid times,” said MIAL. Charter flight operations picked up as well with around 17,500 passengers-close to 15,600 domestic and 1,960 international-using the general aviation (GA) terminal in Kalina between January and June this year. That was a 44% jump in traffic compared to the same 2021 period. “With a total of 6,878 flight movements in the first two quarters of calendar year 2022, the GA terminal witnessed a total of 3432 arrivals and 3446 departures,” said MIAL. Last month, terminal 2 introduced an integrated security clearance system under which both domestic and international flyers pass through a common security check.