Three metros – Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru – topped in air traffic in the August-October period this year. The Mumbai-Delhi-Mumbai, Bengaluru-Delhi-Bengaluru and Bengaluru-Mumbai-Bengaluru sectors accounted for a little over 12 per cent or 8.89 lakh passengers of the 70.39 lakh passengers who flew within the country.

The Mumbai-Delhi-Mumbai sector was the most favoured among domestic air travellers with almost 200,000 flyers travelling on this route during each of the three months, the latest data put out by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation show.  

According to the data, these are the only three routes from over 300 routes which the DGCA tracks which saw over 100,000 people travel in each direction in each of the three months. The DGCA is yet to make public the city pair wise monthly domestic passenger traffic for November. The DGCA so far has only given out monthly data on the number of passengers flown by domestic airlines. Route wise break-up has not been given.

An interesting trend that the data, which has been put in the public domain for the first time, shows is that the number of passengers travelling between two cities varies drastically. For example, 76 passengers travelled from Varanasi to Agra but no passengers flew in the reverse direction in August.

In October while 352 passengers travelled between Hyderabad and Kochi there were no takers for the return journey by air. 

Even on metro routes the numbers were not the same. In October this year 65,530 passengers travelled between Delhi and Chennai while 67,601 travelled between Chennai and Delhi. Similarly, while 65,451 passengers flew from Pune to Delhi in October, 61,617 travelled between Delhi and Pune.

Metro routes like Delhi-Chennai-Delhi, Delhi-Kolkata-Delhi, among others all saw airlines carry over 50,000 passengers a month in each direction.

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