The air corridor between India and the United Arab Emirates has become one of the busiest and most strategically important routes in global aviation. Fueled by booming demand from migrant workers, business travelers, tourists and increasingly affluent Indian middle-class families, flights linking Indian cities with Dubai, Abu Dhabi and other UAE hubs are often flying close to full. Yet this success is now creating tension. Emirates, Dubai’s flagship carrier, says it is constrained by bilateral limits on flying rights and is lobbying for expanded capacity to keep pace with rising demand. New data on traffic growth in both countries, alongside shifting competitive dynamics with Indian carriers, suggests the India–UAE aviation corridor is nearing a turning point.
A Record-Breaking Corridor Linking Two Fast-Growing Aviation Markets
Few international air corridors are as crucial and as politically sensitive as that between India and the UAE. For decades, Dubai has served as a de facto gateway for Indians traveling to the Gulf, Europe, North America and Africa, while millions of Indian expatriates in the UAE depend on frequent, affordable flights home. At the same time, India has evolved into one of the world’s fastest-growing aviation markets, and the UAE into one of the most connected international hubs on the planet. The result is intense traffic in both directions and heavy reliance on each other’s airports and airlines.
Newly released figures from the International Air Transport Association show India handled about 211 million air passengers in 2024, making it the world’s fifth-largest aviation market by total passengers and underscoring its rapidly expanding role in global air travel. In parallel, UAE authorities report that air traffic movements in their skies crossed the one million mark in 2024, the highest level in the country’s history, with Dubai International alone handling more than 90 million passengers and reclaiming its pre-pandemic records. The India–UAE corridor sits at the intersection of these two surging markets, funnelling both point-to-point and transfer passengers through a constrained set of routes.
Indian travelers are now among the single largest source markets for Dubai’s airports, accounting for a significant share of arrivals. For India, routes to the UAE are not only among the busiest outward international sectors, but also a key source of remittance-driven travel, small business connectivity and tourism flows into destinations such as Dubai and Abu Dhabi. This deep interdependence is one reason the current capacity debate is attracting so much attention among policymakers and industry analysts.
As demand grows, the corridor’s popularity is producing familiar symptoms of strain: high load factors, peak-season fare spikes and increasingly crowded schedules at slot-constrained airports. These pressures are now feeding directly into Emirates’ call for expanded flying rights between the two countries.
Emirates’ Push for More Seats and New Indian Gateways
Emirates has long been one of the biggest beneficiaries of the India–UAE corridor, using Dubai’s hub to connect Indian cities with its global network. However, the airline’s India growth has been capped for years by bilateral air service agreements, which limit the number of seats that UAE carriers can offer to and from Indian destinations. Senior executives at the airline have repeatedly argued that these caps are no longer in step with market realities and are leaving money on the table for both countries.
In recent months Emirates has sharpened its public messaging, pointing to consistently high load factors on India–Dubai routes and seasonal overflows in peak travel periods like major Indian festivals and school holidays. The carrier argues that additional capacity would relieve pressure on fares, expand travel options for price-sensitive passengers and support Dubai’s ambition to add hundreds of new city connections as part of its wider economic strategy. The airline also sees opportunity in serving more Indian cities directly, tapping into demand beyond the big metros that already enjoy frequent Gulf links.
The push is not limited to more seats alone. Emirates and other UAE-based carriers are also eyeing wider access to India’s secondary and emerging airports, many of which are being upgraded or newly built as part of New Delhi’s infrastructure drive. Expansion into these smaller markets would allow Gulf carriers to capture traffic directly from India’s tier-two and tier-three cities rather than relying solely on feed from crowded megahubs like Delhi and Mumbai.
However, each additional flight or new city pair touches on sensitive policy questions in India. New rights for Emirates can mean stiffer competition for Indian airlines and a larger share of outbound Indian traffic routing via Dubai rather than through Indian hubs. That trade-off lies at the heart of why the airline’s requests are proving contentious.
India’s Balancing Act: Protecting Home Carriers While Serving Demand
New Delhi has signaled caution in opening the floodgates to more foreign capacity, especially from well-capitalized Gulf carriers that already dominate many long-haul markets. Indian officials are acutely aware that India’s domestic carriers, led by IndiGo and the Air India group, have placed record aircraft orders and are in the midst of ambitious fleet and network expansions. They view the country not just as a source of outbound passengers, but as an emerging global hub in its own right.
Government policy has therefore tended to prioritize the gradual build-up of Indian airlines and Indian airports as international connectors, even if that means holding the line on additional rights for foreign rivals in the short term. At the same time, India has shown flexibility with some partners. In 2025, for example, the government agreed to a significant increase in bilateral flying rights with Kuwait after an 18-year freeze, demonstrating that capacity can be unlocked when it is seen as strategically beneficial and reasonably balanced.
For the UAE, Indian hesitance is partly a reflection of how dominant its own carriers have become across South Asia and beyond. Dubai and Abu Dhabi have grown on the back of a hub-and-spoke model that channels traffic from markets like India onto long-haul routes to Europe, the Americas and Africa. New Delhi and Mumbai, by contrast, are only now being developed as true long-haul hubs. Allowing rapid additional growth for Emirates on India–UAE routes could, some in India argue, delay or dilute that aspiration.
This strategic calculus means that every negotiation over extra weekly seats and new city pairs becomes a proxy for a larger policy debate about India’s place in global aviation. For Indian travelers, however, the key concerns are more immediate and practical: fares, connectivity and reliability on one of their most frequently used international corridors.
Soaring Demand, Tight Capacity and Rising Traveler Frustrations
Passenger demand between India and the UAE has been climbing steadily since international travel fully resumed after the pandemic, driven by multiple overlapping factors. Millions of Indian expatriates live and work across the Gulf, especially in the UAE’s construction, services, retail and technology sectors. Many travel several times a year to maintain ties with families in Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh and other states. At the same time, Dubai and Abu Dhabi have become aspirational short-break destinations for Indian leisure travelers, lured by shopping, theme parks, beaches and year-round events.
On the business side, deepening investment flows and trade links between the two economies are generating more frequent trips for executives, small-business owners and professionals. The UAE’s emergence as a global hub for conferences, start-ups and financial services has only increased its pull for Indian companies. Add to that the role of Dubai as a convenient midway point for Indians heading further west or to Africa, and it is easy to understand why flights are so busy.
Yet supply has not kept pace at the same rate. While both Indian and UAE carriers have added flights and upgauged aircraft on trunk routes, bilateral caps limit how far Gulf airlines can go, and airport congestion in India constrains peak-hour growth. During busy travel periods, seats between key city pairs like Dubai–Mumbai or Dubai–Kochi can be extremely hard to find at short notice, pushing fares sharply higher and forcing some travelers onto multi-stop or overnight routings.
These constraints have tangible consequences. For lower-income migrant workers, higher fares can mean delaying essential trips home, while small and medium businesses face steeper travel costs in already tight operating environments. Travel agents in both countries report that customers often complain of limited last-minute availability on direct India–UAE services, even as connecting flights through other Gulf hubs or via alternative routings remain more accessible. The situation has re-energized calls from consumer advocates and industry groups for a measured but meaningful increase in capacity.
Indian Airlines Step Up: Competition, Connectivity and Pricing
The pressure on the corridor is not solely a function of Emirates’ growth ambitions. Indian airlines themselves are reshaping the competition on India–UAE routes. IndiGo, now firmly entrenched as India’s largest carrier by market share, has been steadily building out its Gulf network, linking cities like Trichy, Kochi, Hyderabad and Lucknow with Dubai, Abu Dhabi and other regional hubs. Air India and Air India Express, backed by the Tata Group, are also ramping up frequencies and upgrading products on routes serving expatriate-heavy corridors.
Recent announcements of new and additional services from smaller Indian airports to Gulf destinations underline how much of the growth is now coming from beyond the big metros. Airports such as Trichy, Mangaluru and others along India’s western and southern coasts are seeing double-digit growth in international passengers, with Dubai and Abu Dhabi consistently ranking among their top destinations. These expansions cater directly to migrant and visiting-friends-and-relatives traffic, often with low-cost fares that undercut some full-service competitors.
The growing presence of Indian carriers in the UAE market has started to chip away at the perception that Gulf airlines are the only option for reliable, frequent service. More Indian capacity also gives New Delhi additional leverage in bilateral discussions, allowing it to argue that its own airlines are now better placed to absorb increased demand. For travelers, this evolving competitive landscape can translate into more choice on schedules and price points, although the overall capacity ceiling still limits how far competition can push down fares.
Nevertheless, there is a risk that if capacity is not expanded in an orderly, coordinated way, price competition could intensify in off-peak periods while bottlenecks remain during holidays and festivals. Both sides are therefore keen to avoid a boom-and-bust dynamic and maintain a level of yield stability that allows airlines to sustain investments in aircraft and service quality.
Policy Crossroads: Bilateral Talks, National Visions and Regional Rivalries
Behind closed doors, civil aviation officials in New Delhi and Abu Dhabi are weighing how to recalibrate the bilateral framework in light of these changing realities. India’s decision in 2025 to substantially raise flying rights for Kuwait after nearly two decades of stasis is particularly noteworthy for negotiators in Dubai and Abu Dhabi. It showed that New Delhi is willing to unlock capacity where it sees mutual benefit and where the move aligns with its broader strategic and economic objectives.
For the UAE, the case for more India capacity rests on both commercial logic and national vision. The country has explicitly positioned aviation as a cornerstone of its economic diversification plans, with Dubai and Abu Dhabi counting on their airports to support tourism, logistics and trade targets through the next decade. Air traffic growth above 10 percent in 2024, and record passenger volumes at Dubai International and Zayed International, are cited domestically as proof that the infrastructure is ready for another step-change in activity.
India, meanwhile, is seeking to develop its own hubs and protect the long-term prospects of its restructured and rapidly expanding national airlines. Large aircraft orders by Indian carriers are predicated on the assumption that a growing share of India’s international traffic can be captured via indigenous hubs rather than foreign ones. That ambition sits uneasily with any deal that might give Emirates and other UAE carriers a fresh boost on some of India’s most lucrative routes.
Adding another layer of complexity is the regional competitive landscape in the Gulf. UAE carriers are not the only ones bidding for Indian passengers. Rival hubs in Qatar and Saudi Arabia are also expanding aggressively, ordering aircraft and investing in new terminals. If India grants more rights to one Gulf partner and not another, it risks tilting the regional balance and provoking calls for comparable treatment. This web of overlapping interests ensures that any adjustment to India–UAE capacity will be the product of careful, incremental diplomacy rather than sudden, sweeping change.
What It Means for Travelers and the Future of the Corridor
For travelers using the India–UAE aviation corridor, the policy debates and commercial maneuvering can feel distant, but the outcomes will directly shape their experience in the years ahead. If Emirates and its peers secure expanded access, passengers are likely to see more flight options, particularly from secondary Indian cities, and potentially more competitive pricing during peak seasons. Travelers connecting onward via Dubai or Abu Dhabi to North America, Europe or Africa would also benefit from smoother itineraries and greater flexibility.
On the other hand, a cautious approach from India that emphasizes the growth of local carriers could gradually create stronger alternatives through Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru and other Indian hubs. Over time, passengers might find more non-stop long-haul options from Indian cities, reducing the need to route through the Gulf for some journeys. However, such a transition would take years to fully materialize, while the immediate pain points on India–UAE routes might persist if bilateral caps remain tight.
In the near term, savvy travelers are likely to continue mixing and matching airlines and routings based on schedule, price and loyalty programs, often combining Indian carriers on one leg with UAE airlines on another. The growth of low-cost widebody and narrowbody services between smaller Indian cities and Gulf destinations will also create new, budget-friendly options, particularly for expatriate workers and families traveling on fixed budgets.
What seems clear is that the India–UAE aviation corridor is entering a more contested and politically charged phase. The days when Gulf carriers could count on near-automatic expansion in India appear to be over, replaced by an environment in which every additional seat must be justified against national aviation strategies and regional rivalries. For travelers and airlines alike, the challenge will be ensuring that this corridor continues to deliver connectivity and value commensurate with its importance, even as the forces shaping it grow more complex.