A newly minted partnership between Adani Airport Holdings and Chinese travel platform DragonPass has been dropped barely a week after take-off. The move, triggered by rising national security concerns, has ended DragonPass’s access to Adani-managed airport lounges across the country.
“DragonPass customers will no longer have access to lounges at Adani-managed airports,” the company said in a statement, adding that regular travellers will see no disruption in lounge or travel services.
At the heart of the pullback lies India’s sharpened scrutiny of foreign entities operating in critical infrastructure. Following the Pahalgam terror attack and rising cross-border tensions with Pakistan, authorities have stepped up their review of Chinese and Turkish firms in aviation and other sensitive sectors.
DragonPass, headquartered in Guangzhou, offers global airport lounge access and travel privileges via credit cards and corporate programs. In India, the company had quietly built a vast footprint—partnering with Adani lounges in Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Lucknow, Jaipur, and Guwahati, as well as securing access to multiple terminals at Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport.
Beyond Delhi, DragonPass had been active in over 30 Indian cities, including Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Chennai, Pune, and Srinagar, making it one of the widest-spread foreign players in India’s lounge ecosystem.
But that very scale raised red flags. Concerns reportedly emerged over data privacy, passenger information access, and potential surveillance risks. With lounge operations integrated into airport networks, regulators were wary of giving a Chinese platform backend visibility into passenger movement and behavioural data.
