Getting around TRV
Kerala’s oldest airport, opened in 1932, Thiruvananthapuram International now ranks second-busiest in the state. Traffic splits across two buildings roughly a kilometre apart — the domestic Terminal 1 near Sankhumukham beach, and Terminal 2 up in Chackai for everything international — joined by an EV coach that runs around the clock, billed on the site as a recent addition. Chackai is also where TRV’s Gulf ties become obvious: beyond Air India Express and IndiGo, its published carrier list names Oman Air, Emirates, Etihad, Air Arabia, Gulf Air and Jazeera Airways, a cluster of Middle East names that tracks how many Keralites work there. Passenger numbers reached 4.9 million across the year to March 2025, spread over 33,316 aircraft movements, and a few weeks into that stretch — May 2024 — TRV became the first airport in India to earn “Zero Waste to Landfill” status, having kept 99.5% of its waste out of landfill.
