Operator Zurich Airport expects ‘slower ramp-up’ at Noida airport amid geopolitical headwinds

The parent company of Noida International Airport (NIA) operator Zurich Airport International AG has said that a slower-than-expected ramp-up of operations is expected at the National Capital Region’s (NCR) second major airport — primarily due to a challenging geopolitical environment — even as it remains bullish on the long-term potential of the new airport that can handle 12 million passengers annually.

“Slower ramp-up expected due to challenging geopolitical environment, with near-term performance remaining subject to elevated uncertainty. Route network will continue to expand, with international services expected to follow,” Zurich Airport Ltd said in its latest investor presentation.

The company owns Zurich Airport International AG, which holds the group’s international shareholding, including in NIA. Zurich Airport, however, added that it continues to have strong confidence in the “long-term growth potential and attractive fundamentals of the Indian aviation market”, which is the the third-largest in the world and is counted among the fastest-growing major aviation markets.

Zurich Airport said that it sees India and Brazil as its key focus markets, where it has “existing presence and synergy potential”. After four years of construction, operations at the NIA in Jewar in Western Uttar Pradesh commenced on June 15.

At present, IndiGo and Akasa Air are operating from the new NCR airport, serving a total of 17 domestic routes. Air India Express had also planned to operate from the NIA, but backed out amid financial headwinds that got exacerbated by the West Asia conflict.

Additionally, the continued closure of the Pakistani airspace has also impacted Indian airlines’ west-bound international operations as well as expansion plans. As per Zurich Airport, the NIA saw 204 flights — departures plus arrivals — in June, which went up to 1,044 flights in July.

The airport served about 25,000 passengers in June and about 77,000 in July. NIA’s operating loss for the first six months of 2026, represented by its earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA), was 2.4 million Swiss Francs, or about $3 million.

As per the guidance shared by Zurich Airport for 2026, the operationalisation of the NIA will weigh on the parent company’s expenditure, including operating costs, depreciation and amortisation charges, and finance expenses.

The new airport’s operationalisation is also expected to result in higher revenue for Zurich Airport, although the net impact on the group’s consolidated earnings for the year is likely to be negative, which is common for early stage large infrastructure projects.

The operationalisation of NIA comes at a time when the aviation sector is grappling with headwinds amid the West Asia crisis, forcing airlines to prune schedules and put network expansion plans on hold. While the NIA management accepts that the crisis is a challenge in the short-term, it is confident of the long-term growth potential in India’s aviation market.

“We won the bid to design and build this airport at the end of 2019. Three months later, the bottom dropped out of the aviation market across the world. No one was flying anymore (due to the Covid pandemic)…We saw traffic in India rebound very quickly, faster than in many parts of the world.

That's the approach we take to the current crisis as well. It's a challenging time for aviation but if we zoom out and look at where the industry has come from in the past 15-20 years, and what the outlook is, we remain incredibly confident,” NIA Vice Chairman Christoph Schnellmann told The Indian Express in June.

According to industry experts, the NIA is likely to be used initially by airlines to mount additional flights connecting the NCR to major metropolitan cities, particularly during the peak hours when the larger Delhi airport is chock-a-block.

It is also likely to be used to operate ultra short-haul flights on regional routes, apart from densifying and expanding the network between the NCR and tier II and III cities. With the Navi Mumbai International Airport’s (NMIA) inauguration in October and launch of commercial operations from December, India’s financial capital became the first Indian megacity to be served by two major airports, bringing the much-needed additional capacity to the region given the capacity-constrained Mumbai airport.

With NIA, Delhi-NCR also entered the dual airport club. Both NMIA and NIA are second airports that will initially operate under the shadow of the much larger primary airports. While NMIA is bound to have a strong start with a rapid scale-up, NIA may be relatively slow on these counts initially.

In the long run, though, it is expected to cement Delhi-NCRs position as India’s primary aviation hub. Mumbai’s primary airport — Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport (CSMIA) — is already saturated, which means that there is little capacity that can be added there given the space constraint.

This essentially means that any additional capacity in the broader Mumbai region must come from NMIA, which translates to almost ready demand and traffic for the new airport However, Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGIA) — India’s largest airport with three terminals and four runways — still has scope for expanding its passenger handling as well as flight capacity and is not as terribly congested as CSMIA.

IGIA plans to expand its passenger handling capacity to around 125 million over the next few years from the current 105 million. It is also worth noting that IGIA and NIA will be run by different operators, which would add to the competitive streak.

By contrast, both CSMIA and NMIA are operated by Adani Airport Holdings. Furthermore, the location of NIA — away from large urban settlements — will be a challenge in the absence of rapid multi-modal connectivity. The airport, while having expressway connectivity, is located 80 km from central Delhi, and even from central Noida, it is almost 60 km...