In fog-hit & cash-crunched December, 2.5 million passengers took KIA route to fly

BENGALURU: The fog-hit and crash-crunched months of November and December post demonetization saw the Kempegowda International Airport (KIA) set two records. It handled 4.45 million passengers in two months.
The airport set a new record of handling 2 million fliers in a single month of November, entering the big league that has Mumbai and Delhi airports. It broke that record with 2.5 million passengers having used the airport in December, an all-time high for KIA which began operations in May 2008.
In 2016, the airport recorded a traffic of over 22.5 million people, and 20% of this came in the last two months.If November recorded 9.09% of all passengers that used the airport in 2016, December’s figure stood at 11.36%.
While the two months are part of the festive season and several flights were pre-booked before the demonetization drive, the fact that KIA has never recorded such a high number has the operator, the Bangalore Airport International Airport Limited (BIAL), pinning big hopes on 2017.
The November and December figures assume importance as a dull period in these two months would have considerably reduced the year-on-year passenger traffic growth at the airport. The number of passengers KIA handled in 2015 (January-December) was 18.1 million, which had grown 25.2% from 14.5 million in 2014. The growth rate in passenger traffic in 2016 shrunk by 3.7 percentage.
“Bengaluru continues to be one of the fastest growing airports in the country and we now have another record, which only indicates what’s in store for 2017,” a BIAL spokesperson said.
The airport also achieved another milestone in 2016—touching 2.5 million metric tonne of cargo handled since inception.
“There will be an enhanced focus on cargo operations and we are confident of more traffic once the second runway becomes operational in 2019,” a source said.
9 fog days in 2016, 462 flights grounded
Compared to 20 in 2015, there were only 9 fog days at KIA. However, the number of flights affected in 2016 stand at 462 against 574 in 2015. On an average, 28 flights were affected per fog day in 2015, while it was 51 in 2016. The reason: The density of fog this year was much higher than in 2015, therefore affecting the visibility severely. In 8 fog days in 2014, 194 flights were affected, an average of 24 flights per day.
While sources in the IMD conceded that the fog this year was more dense, KIA sources said the lowest visibility was 50m. “Several of these flights were hit due to fog and bad weather in other airports,” a KIA spokesperson said.
She explained that on days when Delhi is hit by fog, both arrivals and take-off from Bengaluru get disrupted. “These are not just Bengaluru-Delhi or Delhi-Bengaluru flights, but also several transit flights,” she added.