India's domestic passenger traffic up 27%: IATA

A global airlines' association on Thursday reported that India`s domestic passenger traffic grew by 27.4% in March.

"The domestic India market remains the fastest expanding market, with growth edging up to 27.4% year-on-year in March," said International Air Transport Association (IATA) in its global passenger traffic results for March.

"Growth in the India domestic market is being propelled by the comparatively strong economic backdrop as well as sizeable increases in services."

According to IATA's March traffic results, India`s domestic passenger traffic grew the fastest amongst the seven major aviation markets of the world. The other major aviation markets include -- Australia, Brazil, China, Japan, the Russian Federation and the US.

In fact IATA`s data showed that India`s passenger traffic was over six times more than the growth of the second fastest growing market -- the US. 

Data furnished by IATA disclosed that India`s domestic passenger traffic growth was followed by that of the US at 4.1%, the Russian Federation at 4%, China at 3.3% and Australia at 2.3%.

However, Brazil and Japan reported decline in their domestic passenger traffic at -8.3% and -1.7%, respectively.

"India's annual domestic RPK (revenue passenger kilometers which measures actual passenger traffic) growth rate has now been in double digits for nineteen consecutive months," IATA said.

The data further pointed out that India's domestic capacity in the month under review rose by 21.7%.

The average flight frequencies within India are scheduled to increase by 11.5% year-on-year in 2016. Earlier, data furnished by the Indian civil aviation ministry revealed that domestic air passenger traffic increased by 25.25% in March.

The air passenger traffic had stood at 78.72 lakh passengers -- up from 62.85 lakh in the corresponding month last year. The ministry data revealed that the low-cost carrier (LCC) IndiGo was the dominant airline during the period under review with a market share of 37%.

It was followed by Jet Airways with 18.2%, state-run Air India was third with 15.4%, and SpiceJet followed next with 13%.