OAG has launched its latest aviation insights dashboard focused on India, one of the fastest-growing aviation markets in the world. This dashboard provides critical market intelligence and highlights the key drivers behind India’s rapidly transforming aviation sector.
Indian Aviation’s Growth in Context
India is the world’s most populous nation, but despite this, it ranks third globally in domestic air capacity, trailing behind the United States and China which have much more mature air service markets. Access to air travel in India is growing fast, however, as disposable income grows in the emerging middle class and air connectivity improves across the vast geography of India. This is undoubtedly driving international air capacity growth which this July is a very healthy 8.1% ahead of July 2024, with particularly strong growth to destinations in Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam and Saudi Arabia.
With India’s two largest carriers – IndiGo and the Air India group - leading the transformation and growth of India’s aviation sector and collectively accounting for just over three quarters of capacity, OAG provides visibility on how they, and others, are growing year on year and where the focus of that growth is.
Infrastructure Expansion
Airport capacity is keeping pace, with the planned new airports at Navi Mumbai and Noida International (near Delhi) scheduled for opening in mid to late 2025, bringing much needed room for growth in both of these metropolitan areas. More widely, there are plans for 50 new airports across India to be constructed between now and the end of the decade, and more into the 2030s. India currently has 117 airports with scheduled services, and the aspiration nationally is for this to grow above 200, facilitating the vision that 95% of India’s population should be within 100km of an airport.
Currently two thirds of India’s domestic capacity operates through the Top 10 largest airports, however this is likely to become more widely distributed as new airports are constructed, and route networks grow.
Looking inwards, domestic capacity has experienced strong growth in the last couple of years, with a rate of 7.8% for the 12 months to July 2025, compared to the previous 12 months. In the first quarter of 2025, domestic capacity grew at an average rate of 10% compared to 2024, whilst in quarter two this slowed slightly to 8.4%. The latest capacity data for July 2025 shows a contraction in domestic capacity, by 2.2% compared to July 2024 partly as the delivery pipeline of new aircraft provides a brake on expansion and there is a slight slowdown in India’s economic growth.
Looking Ahead
India’s aviation market is on the cusp of significant transformation. With rapid growth in both domestic and international sectors, and substantial investments in infrastructure, the country is preparing to become a global aviation hub. OAG will continue to monitor this evolution closely through its data dashboards, offering valuable insights for industry stakeholders.