Flying high

The aviation business in India continues to post healthy growth on the back of a rise in the number of domestic and outbound passengers.

Published : Jan 17, 2019 12:30 IST

AIR passenger traffic in the country, both domestic and international, posted healthy growth in 2017-18 over the previous year, according to a report from the Directorate General of Civil Aviation. According to the report, air cargo carried by scheduled airline operators, both domestic and international, also witnessed a positive growth.

The number of domestic departing passengers grew to 123.32 million in 2017-18 from 103.75 million in 2016-17, up 18.9 per cent. The domestic airline demand was up at 117.04 billion revenue passenger kilometres (RPK) from 98.64 billion RPK, a growth of 18.6 per cent. RPK is a measure of airline flight traffic calculated by multiplying the number of revenue-paying passengers aboard by the distance travelled.

Similarly, domestic airline capacity grew 15 per cent to 134.54 billion available seat kilometres (ASK) from 116.94 billion ASK. ASK is equal to the number of revenue passengers carried on each flight stage by the corresponding stage distance.

The robust rise in the total number of domestic passengers was mainly because of the strong growth in traffic carried by Air India, IndiGo, SpiceJet, Vistara, Air Asia and Go Air.

International passenger traffic saw the number of departing and arriving passengers rise to 60.58 million from 54.68 million, a growth of 10.8 per cent.

During 2017-18, IndiGo had the maximum market share both in terms of RPK and passengers carried, followed by Jet Airways, SpiceJet and Air India.

More than half of the passenger traffic to and from India was accounted for by countries in Africa and West Asia.

Out of the 93 scheduled international operators, the top six accounted for nearly 50 per cent of the total international passenger traffic in 2017-18, while the top 15 operators accounted for nearly three-fourths. Jet Airways had the maximum market share of 13.8 per cent, followed by Air India (10.4 per cent), Emirates (9.2 per cent), Air India Express (6.2 per cent), IndiGo (5.3 per cent) and Etihad Airways (4.3 per cent).

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