The Hindu Business Line : Steady rise in airline passenger traffic

About 6.82 million passengers used Indian airports during February 2006, an increase of about 35.7 per cent over the corresponding period in the previous year, according to the latest statistics available with the Airports Authority of India (AAI).

The increase in passenger traffic is also because of growth in international passengers and the introduction of a number of low-cost airlines on domestic sectors.

International passenger traffic registered an increase of 15.9 per cent during February with 1.97 million passengers. Bangalore topped the chart with 88,033 passengers, an increase of 57 per cent over the previous year.

The overall increase in traffic during this period has been attributed to the lowering of fares between Indian and other international destinations.

More flights

Domestic passenger traffic during this period touched 4.85

million from 3.33 million, an increase of 45.8 per cent. Airports such as Ahmedabad (109.1 per cent), Coimbatore (90 per cent), Pune and Amritsar (88.3 per cent) registered huge increases as many more airlines started operations to these airports.

In February this year, 110.41thousand tonnes of freight was handled, an increase of 8.3 per cent over the previous year.

During this period, all operational airports handled 74,740 aircraft movement, an increase of 28.6 per cent over the previous year.

Domestic aircraft

Air Deccan introduced Hyderabad as one of its major hubs recently. Low-cost airlines Paramount, SpiceJet, Kingfisher Airlines and Go Air also started operation, which has contributed to domestic aircraft movement. Domestic aircraft movement grew by 34.7 per cent during February.

On the international side, American Airlines and Continental Airlines started their operations out of Delhi. Jet Airways has started operating on the Mumbai-Singapore and Chennai- Kuala Lumpur sector.

The higher growth in traffic is due to increase in frequency and start of operation by new airlines such as Air India Express in the southern region, according to information from AAI.