India is reworking its airport privatisation strategy amid fears that existing private operators dominate the sector and risk over-leverage, leading to proposed measures to diversify the bidding landscape and prevent monopolistic control.
India’s plan to hand over a new set of airports to private operators is being reshaped by concerns that the sector is already too concentrated and too highly leveraged, according to records of a government meeting seen by Business Standard. Officials at the Ministry of Civil Aviation have proposed capping the number of airport bundles any one bidder can win, saying the aim is to prevent one group from dominating too much of the market and taking on debt levels that could ripple across several projects at once.
The move comes as the government prepares a third round of airport privatisation centred on bundling larger, better-performing hubs with smaller airports that have weaker cash flows. In the latest proposal, five bundles are being considered: Amritsar with Kangra, Varanasi with Gaya and Kushinagar, Bhubaneswar with Hubballi, Raipur with Aurangabad, and Tiruchirappalli with Tirupati. Officials want a single concessionaire for each bundle, with private operators using earnings from busier airports to support investment and operations at less profitable ones.
India’s airport landscape is already dominated by a handful of players. The Airports Authority of India runs 129 airports, while Adani Airport Holdings operates eight airports and accounts for roughly a quarter of passenger traffic and about a third of air cargo, according to industry estimates. GMR Airports, which operates Delhi and Hyderabad among others, has about 27.5 per cent of passenger traffic. Together, the two private groups handle more than half of India’s air passengers. The airline market is similarly concentrated, with IndiGo and Air India Group together carrying about 91 per cent of domestic passengers in July 2026.
That concentration has fed political and regulatory scrutiny before. After the government privatised six airports in February 2019, all were won by the Adani Group and transferred between October 2020 and November 2021. Opposition lawmakers later questioned why so many airports were awarded to one private group. The new bundling model appears designed, at least in part, to avoid repeating that experience, while still attracting large infrastructure investors into a market the government sees as strategically important.
The ministry is also trying to widen the pool of potential bidders. Officials have argued that technical experience should not be limited to aviation alone, and that expertise from other infrastructure sectors should count if it falls within the government’s harmonised infrastructure list. The proposal still needs further market sounding, and private players are expected to be consulted before the plan is sent back to the Public Private Partnership Appraisal Committee for final recommendation. The draft also requires winning concessionaires to carry out capital works and capacity expansion, with timing linked to traffic and regulatory triggers rather than fixed deadlines. A one-year joint management period with Airports Authority of India staff would follow takeover, after which the operator would have to retain 60 per cent of those employees for up to three years.
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