The Hindu Business Line : Airports handle more passengers in H1 than last year but same as 2007-08

Jet, set, go: There was a marginal decline in Chennai withthe airport handling 3.19 million domestic passengers duringApril-September this year as compared with 3.24 millionpreviously. - Kamal Narang

Ashwini Phadnis

New Delhi, Nov. 28

The 46 operational airports in the country handled 4.2 crore domestic passengers during April-September 2009-10, which is about the same as the numbers handled in 2007.

This is in sharp contrast to the situation in 2008 when the number of domestic passengers handled by the airports touched 3.94 crore, registering a decline of 6.7 per cent over the previous year.

The latest data collated by the Airports Authority of India (AAI) show that only nine domestic airports including Chennai, Nagpur, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Tirupati and Vadodara handled lesser number of domestic passengers during April-September 2009-10 compared with the same period in the previous year.

Marginal dip in Chennai

There was a marginal decline in Chennai with the airport handling 3.19 million domestic passengers during April-September this year compared with 3.24 million previously.

On the other hand, Hyderabad witnessed a decline of 8.1 per cent handling 2.29 million domestic passengers compared with 2.49 million handled during April-September 2008-09. On a month-on-month basis, however, only one airport — Tirupati registered a decline of 7.2 per cent having handled 9,044 passengers in September this year against 9,741 previously. Jodhpur airport registered a growth of almost 300 per cent handling 8,159 passengers in September this year against 2,131 previously.

The rebound is being attributed to more low-cost flying options being available in the market. The period saw Jet Airways launch Jet Airways Konnect its low-cost arm, while Kingfisher Airlines shifted a large portion of its operations to Kingfisher Red, its low-cost variant.

Experts feel that it is too early to say that these numbers point to recovery. “There has been growth but this is not profitable growth. We expect the domestic passenger numbers for 2009-10 to be at the level of 2007-08 or even slightly better. There are several reasons for this including the economy doing better. Growth with profitability will come only in fiscal 2010-11,” said Mr Kapil Kaul, Chief Executive Officer, Indian Subcontinent and Middle East, Centre for Asia-Pacific Aviation.

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