Prior to the war, Kannur airport handled around 90,000-100,000 international passengers in a month and in March it dropped to just over 5,300
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th-online Administrator
Retail and food and beverage outlets operating at Kannur airport in Kerala have served force majeure notices seeking waiver of concessionaire fee payments as West Asia conflict impacts international travel.
While airports in Kerala have seen drop in footfalls and dent in their revenue — Kannur has been hit the hardest as around 80 per cent of its traffic is international and exclusively to/from West Asia.
No international airline operates at Kannur as it has not been granted a point of call status by the government. Also after the start of the conflict, Air India Express and IndiGo are concentrating their operations from larger cities such as Mumbai, Bengaluru or Kochi. “Before the conflict we used to handle 24 flights daily. In whole of March we only handled 30 flights,” said Kannur Airport’s Chief Operating Officer Aswani Kumar.
Prior to the war, Kannur airport handled around 90,000-100,000 international passengers in a month and in March it dropped to just over 5,300. As of now, IndiGo has suspended all its international flights from Kannur until April 20 and Air India Express is operating limited special flights to Sharjah, Muscat and Jeddah.
To put in context, share of international traffic at Delhi airport is 28 per cent and that is spread across various geographies. At Kochi airport international traffic share is 48 per cent and at Kozhikode international traffic accounts for around 75 per cent of the total.
‘Cargo traffic is equally impacted due to flight cancellations, and non aeronautical revenue from duty free, retail and F&B sales is virtually zero. All our concessionaires have served us a force majeure notice seeking waiver in fee payment which they make to us,” Kumar said.
“The government has removed caps on domestic fares. Airlines are charging fuel surcharge to make good their losses. Tier II airports like Kannur are suffering more and should in fact be provided relief by way of waiver of cost recovery charges that are levied by Airport Authority of India, customs and India Meteorological Department,” he added.
He said monthly revenue of airport is around ₹15-18 crore and that has dropped by around 80 per cent. “Full impact of the conflict can only be analysed once the situation normalises,” he added.
Published on April 8, 2026
