Flybrary: How Indian airports are making room for readers

Long waits at the boarding gate and delayed flights must have tested your patience, ending in you doomscrolling or watching something – or scrambling through your credit cards to get a peek of the multi-cuisine menu at the lounge.  You might want to know your boarding pass comes with another option: Flybrary, a free library for passengers.

Flybrary is an initiative launched by Bakul Foundation in collaboration with Airports Authority of India – with Bhubaneswar’s Biju Patnaik International Airport becoming the first participant in February last year. This programme allows passengers to browse and borrow books, read them at the airport, and also take them along for the journey – all without paying a single rupee.  

Over 60 airports across India now have Flybrary shelves at the arrival or departure areas – Bhubaneswar airport has them in both. This also includes smaller airports like Pune, Srinagar, Chandigarh, Patna, Chennai, Leh, Jaipur, Lucknow, Ahmedabad, Ranchi, Bhuj, Darbhanga, Kullu-Manali, Prayagraj and Amritsar, and more.

From departure gates to reading nooks

The arrivals and departure areas of airports offer shelves stocked with books in English, Hindi, and regional languages – including fiction, non-fiction, self-help titles, children’s books, and magazines. Yes, these shelves are meant to be actually used, not merely admired while you look out for a charging point. 

The system is simple: pick a book, read it or carry it along for the journey, and put it back on the Flybrary shelf at the airport you land on. In case your destination isn’t a participant in this, then you can take the book home and return it on your next time at the airport.

Travellers can also donate their books to this airport library initiative, It transforms the airport into something more than just a transit point – a place where a delayed flight could become a reason to finish that novel. So next time, if your wait time at the boarding gate is longer than your expectations, there’s no need to dramatically stare at the departure screen. There might be a book waiting for you instead.