Delhi-Mumbai may lose world's third busiest tag earned in 2017 this year

It is the third busiest air route in the world, with as many as 47,500 departures and landings in 2017. Yet despite catapulting in this position, the Mumbai-Delhi route could face serious challenges is sustaining or improving it this year. The reason? Hardly any additional capacity is now available at Mumbai airport to deploy more flights on on this route.
According to OAG, an air travel intelligence company based in UK, the Mumbai to Delhi air route was the third busiest in the world in 2017, with an average 130 flights between the two cities every day. In 2016 India was number six in the pecking order of the busiest routes, which was calculated based on the capacity deployed on the route one way. In 2017 only the Jeju-Seoul Gimpo route (with over 64,991 flights) and Melbourne-Sydney (54, 519 departures and arrivals) were busier than Mumbai-Delhi.
The importance of the route can be gauged from the fact that airlines say that it make up about 10 per cent of the capacity and revenue of the airlines business--surely by far the biggest market. And, at an average passenger load factor on this route of around 80-90 per cent, it is pretty clear that it is a lucrative route in which the demand is growing.

After all, over 10,000 passengers depart every day from Mumbai for Delhi and vice versa.
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