News / Delhi taking the lion's share of India's new air cargo capacity

© Alexey Novikov

Increased demand for airfreight out of India has seen global capacity from the subcontinent rise 7% this year so far – but it’s a tale of two airports, with Delhi taking on the bulk of the extra supply.

As a result, Delhi Airport is becoming congested, according to local forwarders.

Capacity out of the Indian sub-continent to Europe was up 10% last month, year on year, and up 9% year to date, according to Rotate’s capacity database. To North America, capacity was up 8% in the year.

But drilling down to individual airports shows that this year so far, capacity out of Delhi to North America was up 10.5%, while Mumbai was up just 2.6%. Last month, capacity out of Mumbai was more than 11% below last year.

To the EU, Delhi capacity went up 9.4%, but just 1.6% in Mumbai in the year so far. Last month, Mumbai’s capacity fell nearly 12% over 2023, while Delhi’s surged more than 19%.

And Delhi is beginning to capture new transhipment traffic, such as cargo out of Bangladesh. According to Ligi Logistics: “We see a lot of Dhaka shipments moving by land-air via Delhi.”

But Ligi reported this week that as a result, “Terminal Delhi is congested, and off-loading is taking time”, and added that the road freight from Bangladesh was also causing delays in off-loading, “due to the rush of trucks”.

Demand for transhipment traffic has also triggered rate rises, added Ligi.

One forwarder told The Loadstar that rates out of India to the US in the week to 7 October were up 120% on the same week in 2023, to $5.01 per kg, while to Europe, rates were up 155%, at $3.22 per kg.

High demand, in particular for hi-tech, has led airlines to add more capacity. Today Challenge Group announced it had added two newly converted 767-300Fs to its fleet, which has allowed it to add services to India.

“This additional capacity enabled the successful launch of a service to Delhi in early October in addition to the three existing weekly frequencies to Mumbai, taking to five the weekly flights catering to India’s growing industries, including pharmaceuticals, automotive, textiles, electronics and hi-tech,” said Or Zak, chief commercial officer.

Challenge is not alone: Air France is increasing its Delhi services to 10 a week from 29 October, but discontinuing its Chennai flights from the 27th.

Meanwhile, Mumbai is set to get another airport: last week, the inaugural landing of an Indian Air Force C-295 took place at Navi Mumbai International Airport in Maharashtra. The airport, Adani Group’s latest air project, is set to open on 31 March.