India, Dec. 26 -- India is the world's fifth-largest civil aviation market, handling over 700,000 aircraft movements annually. Between April 2024 and March 2025, a total of 200 million (international and domestic) passengers flew from the country's airports. Even as airline debuts and closures dominate headlines, the airport ecosystem remains steady, because airports don't shut shop overnight. The growth in operational airport numbers has been impressive - from 74 in 2014 to 164 now. And there is ambition for more. Recently, the Airport Authority of India (AAI) chairman outlined a plan to set up 34 "mega airports" by 2047. With two new mega airports, Navi Mumbai in Maharashtra and Jhevar in Uttar Pradesh, expected to start functioning soon, India is set to have seven mega airports, up from five (Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Bengaluru, and Hyderabad) in 2019. Coming to the smaller airports, many have become operational in recent years, and a clutch of these are thriving. The AAI chairman had listed previously non-functional airports that are now mini hubs - Darbhanga, Salem, Jharsuguda, Kanpur, Deogar, Nashik, Hollongi, and Kolhapur, among others. The dawn of air connectivity has acted like a new lifeline for many of these smaller towns and cities, which now support a thriving business-traveller community and are witnessing an uptick in the leisure traffic, fuelled by surging disposable incomes and growing aspirations. Thanks to UDAN and a combination of other government policies, airports like Prayagraj handled one million passengers in 2025 with 30 flights a week, connecting directly to six destinations in India, earning a small profit in the bargain. Traffic at Agra, Durgapur and Gwalior has risen at a compounded rate of 40%. Darbhanga operates an average of 10 flights a day to five destinations. This is good news for the Indian economy, as the ripple effects of enhanced air connectivity are well known. That said, there are many issues with the airport ecosystem that need fixing before India moves on setting up more mega airports. I will highlight some of these here. One, there are a large number of unused airstrips and small airports, which were developed over the years at the behest of the political leadership of the day; these spots had neither the requirement nor the wherewithal to pay for such air services. The government needs to discourage legislators from promising air connectivity to gather votes. Airports and airstrips should only be built after a feasibility study and other scientific assessments. Even when a new airport or the expansion of an existing facility is considered necessary or justified, it needs to be built in a modular fashion, scaled up as traffic picks up; the public expenditure must be justified by the return on the investment. Two, several smaller airports already handle large volumes of traffic but urgently need to be made more efficient or get upgrades to cater to growing traffic. The Hindon airport in the NCR is one such. Even as AAI continues to privatise wherever possible, it needs to draw up a second list of airports that might not be of interest to private players but nonetheless need upgradation and attention. Limited public funds must be spent on these, while avoiding expensive bloopers, such as Dabolim (Goa)'s large car park that has too many design flaws to be usable. And finally, AAI must shake up several of its loss-making airports and turn them profitable. While some of these might always remain in the red (and these losses can be funded by the public as the overall economic benefits for the region often far outweigh the losses incurred), a serious attempt can be made to increase efficiency and profitability at others. Eighty-one AAI run-and-managed airports - including Delhi's Safdarjung airport (handling VIP traffic), Agartala, and Imphal - suffered a cumulative loss of around Rs.10,000 crore in the past decade. Twenty-two from this pool of 81 have become non-operational. Careful analysis can point at management rethink to turn these around. Most of these suffer from the same ailments that afflicted the erstwhile AAI-run metro airports: lower-than-required handling capacity both for the terminal and airside, a tired and uncared for look and feel, a paucity of shops and eateries, staffed by an indifferent and cynical set of employees. Of these, the last factor is the biggest bugbear. The AAI airports need to be prodded to adopt the best practices of airports under private management, while shunning their undesirable practices. India must fix its smaller airports for efficiency and viabilities before it entertains grand ambitions. This will be the definitive "make or break" for a thriving airport ecosystem in the country....