Kumbh over, Prayagraj now lags behind Ayodhya, Gorakhpur airports in footfall

Prayagraj: The Prayagraj airport, which was among the top 20 busiest airports in the country during Maha Kumbh, is facing a sharp decline in passenger traffic and flight frequency and has fallen behind Ayodhya and Gorakhpur airports in terms of flyers. During the world's largest religious fair, the airport handled an average of 100 flights and over 12,000 passengers daily, which has now come down to 10 to 12 flights and approximately 1,500 passengers per day.

The drastic fall in the number of flights is cited as the reason behind the reduced passenger footfall. For the first time since the airport's expansion, Prayagraj has not received a single new flight in the summer schedule released by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA). Instead, several existing flights have been suspended or reduced in frequency. Recently, Alliance Air's Delhi flight and Indigo's Lucknow flight were discontinued. Additionally, Indigo's Mumbai and Bangalore flights, which previously saw high occupancy and operated daily, have also seen a significant reduction in frequency.

In the first 16 days of April 2025, only 24,237 passengers travelled through 182 flights at the Prayagraj airport. In contrast, Ayodhya and Gorakhpur airports recorded over 50,000 passengers during the same period. This marks a stark shift from the previous financial year when Prayagraj was the third busiest airport in Uttar Pradesh, after Lucknow and Varanasi. Members of the Airport Advisory Committee, Ashish Gupta and Dhananjay Singh, expressed concern over the situation. They questioned the logic behind building a new terminal, spending crores if flight services were going to be reduced so drastically. "Prayagraj is one of the most important cities of the state. Such neglect in air connectivity is disappointing," they said. Following the Maha Kumbh, flights to several key cities like Indore, Bhopal, Lucknow, Gorakhpur, Dehradun, Jaipur, Guwahati, Kolkata, Chennai, Jammu, Ahmedabad and Chandigarh have been discontinued. At present, Prayagraj Airport has direct flights only to Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Bhubaneswar, Raipur and Bilaspur.