Bengaluru, March 25 (IANS): Kempegowda international airport in this tech hub registered a record 15 million passengers arriving and departing in this fiscal year (2014-15), making it the third busiest terminal after New Delhi and Mumbai.

"The 15-millionth passenger landed at our airport on Sunday (March 15) evening, making our terminal the third busiest airport in the country after Delhi (36 million) and Mumbai (32 million)," Bangalore International Airport Ltd (BIAL) managing director G.V. Sanjay Reddy said in a statement here on Wednesday.

The greenfield airport at Devanahalli in the city's northern suburb, about 40 km from the city centre, is operated by a consortium of public and private partners, including central and state governments.

By achieving the milestone (15 million passengers) even before this fiscal ended (March 31), as against 12.86 million passengers in last fiscal (2013-14), the airport has graduated to the mid-sized category (15-25 million passengers airports) within seven years of commencing flight operations.

"With exponential growth over the last 11 months, ours is the busiest airport in south India and the country's third largest. We will end this fiscal with 15.24 million passengers and consolidate our operations to handle more traffic," Reddy asserted.

The airport has seen an upswing of 19.3 percent in overall passenger traffic, with 21.4 percent growth from domestic and 11.2 percent growth from international flights.

"The air traffic movements have also seen an annual growth of 13.2 percent, while cargo traffic grew 15.9 percent, with 25.3 percent from domestic and 10 percent from international consignments," the statement added.

Supporting the southern state's vision of becoming a pharma hub, the airport cargo partner Menzies Aviation Bobba has opened its pharma cold zone, while cargo partner Air India-SATS (Singapore Airport Terminal Services) is setting up its CoolPort perishables handling centre at the airport.