New Delhi: A leading global airlines’ association on Thursday reported that India’s domestic passenger demand grew by 24.6 percent in February.
“India led all domestic markets again with a 24.6 percent year-on-year growth, supported by the strong economic backdrop, as well as notable increases in services,” said International Air Transport Association (IATA) in its global passenger traffic results for February.
“This trend is expected to continue with flight frequencies in 2016 scheduled to increase by 11.5 percent year-on-year,” it said.
According to IATA, India’s passenger traffic demand grew the fastest amongst the seven major aviation markets of the world — Australia, Brazil, China, Japan, Russian Federation and the US.
“All markets except Brazil showed growth, with the strongest increases occurring in India, the US and China,” IATA cited.
India’s traffic demand growth was followed by that of the US at 8.9 percent, China at 8.2 percent, Australia at 4.6 percent, the Russian Federation at 3.4 percent and Japan at 1.4 percent.
However, Brazil’s domestic passenger growth slumped by 3.1 percent during the month under review.
According to IATA, India’s domestic capacity in the month under review rose by 27.4 percent.
On a global-basis, total passenger traffic demand rose 8.6 percent in February 2016.
Further, the overall global passenger traffic results showed a 9.6 percent increase in capacity during the month under review, with a load factor of 77.8 percent.
“In the first two months of 2016, demand for passenger connectivity is off to its strongest start in eight years,” said Tony Tyler, director general and chief executive of IATA.
“However, February was the first month since the middle of 2015 in which capacity growth exceeded demand, which caused the global load factor to decline.”
Earlier, data furnished by the Indian civil aviation ministry revealed that domestic air passenger traffic increased by 23.41 percent in February, which stood at 74.76 lakh passengers — up from 60.16 lakh in the corresponding month last year.
The ministry data disclosed that the low-cost carrier (LCC) IndiGo achieved the highest market share at 36.8 percent followed by Jet Airways (18.4), Air India (15.4), SpiceJet (13.1), GoAir (8.00) and JetLite (2.8 percent).
AirAsia India had a market share of 2.2 percent, followed by Vistara (2.00), Air Costa (0.8), Trujet and Air Pegasus had a market penetration of 0.3 percent each.
