India’s top-ranked airport, Khajuraho in Madhya Pradesh, has had no commercial flights for two months even after topping the 2026 National Service and Customer Satisfaction Index survey.
The survey, carried out by the Airports Authority of India, ranked Khajuraho first based on passenger facilities, cleanliness, security and service quality, not on the number of flights or passengers it handles.
Flight operations at the airport have been suspended through July and August because of ongoing runway and other technical works, with services expected to resume around October.
Prior to the suspension, the airport ran just two scheduled flights, linking Khajuraho to Delhi and Varanasi.
Airport director Santosh Singh said the ranking “reflected the hard work of the entire airport staff and the trust of passengers,” noting that the survey had been conducted while regular flights were still running.
Singh added that commercial services would resume once the runway work at the airport was finished.
Bhopal’s Raja Bhoj Airport came in third nationally in the same survey, and Khajuraho had also topped the AAI’s customer satisfaction survey in December 2025.
Residents in the area have questioned how the airport can be ranked best in the country while having no flights at all during July and August.
The airport’s runway is 2,286 metres long and 45 metres wide, and its terminal building, opened in January 2016, was constructed at a cost of roughly Rs 90 crore.
The airport primarily serves visitors travelling to the Khajuraho Group of Monuments, a UNESCO World Heritage Site renowned for its medieval temple carvings, located a short distance from the terminal.
Khajuraho is best known internationally for its UNESCO World Heritage-listed group of temples, and the airport primarily serves tourists visiting the site as well as pilgrims and business travellers to the region.
The Airports Authority of India conducts its National Service and Customer Satisfaction Index survey periodically to benchmark airports on the quality of the passenger experience they offer, independent of how much traffic they handle.
(Image: Photo by Z thomas, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0)
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