What the Airports Authority of India actually is, the four categories every Indian airport falls into, which airports handle the most traffic, and — the part most study material skips — who actually runs each of them day to day.
This is one of the highest-yield general awareness topics for AAI ATC specifically, since the exam is run by the very organisation this chapter is about.
The Airports Authority of India, AAI, is a statutory body under the Ministry of Civil Aviation, created by an Act of Parliament to build, upgrade, maintain and manage India's civil aviation infrastructure — both the ground facilities and the airspace above them.
Before 1995, India ran its international airports and its domestic airports through two separate organisations. The International Airports Authority of India, set up in 1972, looked after the international gateways. The National Airports Authority, set up in 1986, looked after the rest. The AAI Act, 1994 merged the two into the single body that exists today.
The order mirrors India's own airport priorities after independence: international gateways came first (1972), broader domestic coverage came later (1986), and the merger that unified both came last (1995).
AAI's own airport count is usually quoted as around 137, split into four categories. The exact numbers shift by a handful every year as new airports open or get reclassified, so treat these as current rather than fixed forever.
International airports are cleared to handle flights to and from other countries. Customs airports are cleared for limited international operations, mainly chartered or specific scheduled flights, without full international-airport status. Domestic airports handle only flights within India. Civil enclaves are the civilian passenger sections built inside airfields that are primarily run by the Defence forces — the airfield belongs to the military, but a civilian terminal operates alongside it.
A Customs airport is not quite a full international airport, but it is not purely domestic either — it is cleared for specific international traffic only. Thinking of it as the middle tier between International and Domestic fixes the ordering.
Ranked by annual passenger traffic, the same five airports have held the top spots for several years running, though the gap between them keeps shifting.
| Rank | Airport | City | Code |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Indira Gandhi International Airport | Delhi | DEL |
| 2 | Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport | Mumbai | BOM |
| 3 | Kempegowda International Airport | Bengaluru | BLR |
| 4 | Rajiv Gandhi International Airport | Hyderabad | HYD |
| 5 | Chennai International Airport | Chennai | MAA |
Delhi and Mumbai are consistently the only two Indian airports crossing 50 million passengers a year, making them a clear top pair, with Bengaluru a clear third and Hyderabad and Chennai following behind.
This is the detail that trips people up: AAI built India's major airports, but most of the busiest ones are no longer run by AAI day to day. Since the mid-2000s, India has handed operations of its biggest airports to private consortiums under long-term concession agreements, while AAI keeps a minority ownership stake.
This distinction is worth holding onto precisely, since exam questions often test exactly this: whether a student knows AAI still has a stake, or wrongly assumes AAI has nothing to do with a privatised airport at all.
| Airport | Main private operator | AAI's role today |
|---|---|---|
| Delhi (DEL) | GMR Group-led consortium | Minority stake, no longer day-to-day operator |
| Mumbai (BOM) | Adani Group | Minority stake, no longer day-to-day operator |
| Bengaluru (BLR) | Fairfax-led consortium | Minority stake, no longer day-to-day operator |
| Hyderabad (HYD) | GMR Group | Minority stake, no longer day-to-day operator |
| Most other Indian airports | — | Directly owned and operated by AAI |
Beyond Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru and Hyderabad, plus a handful of airports awarded to Adani in a separate 2019 privatisation round (including Lucknow, Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Mangaluru, Thiruvananthapuram and Guwahati), the overwhelming majority of AAI's airport network remains directly AAI-operated.
A question asks: "Delhi's Indira Gandhi International Airport is operated by AAI. True or False?" How should this be answered, and why?
Practice covering AAI's formation, airport categories, traffic rankings, and who actually operates each major airport, with a full answer key.
Multiple choice questions, building in difficulty. Full solutions are in the downloadable PDF above.
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