Indian Aviation Industry On A Rise: Domestic Air Travel Surpasses Pre-Covid Levels

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Domestic air travel surpassed the pre-Covid average, after touching an all-time high on Sunday. According to the Ministry of Civil Aviation, "India`s domestic air traffic reached a new height with an all-time high on Sunday when a total of 9,13,336 passengers travelled on 5,947 flights". Recently, International Air Transport Association (IATA) report said that India is fast emerging as a key global aviation market, according to the latest market analysis report. India's domestic air travel has continued to grow robustly and as of February, it was a mere 2.2 per cent shy of reaching pre-pandemic levels measured by passenger revenue kilometres (PRK).

"The India domestic passenger market also led the rest of the domestic markets in the passenger load factor (PLF) metric in the report which includes the US, China and Japanese domestic markets. It has been the top domestic market measured by PLF for the last four months achieving PLFS of 81.6 per cent in February, 85.2 per cent in January, 88.9 per cent in December 2022, and 87.9 per cent in November 2022," the report stated.

In the last IATA report released in February this year, it was said that India`s domestic air travel witnessed massive improvement as it hit 85.7 per cent of pre-COVID levels in the year 2022. Recovery in air travel continued in December 2022.

The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) data shows that in the year 2022 had seen 12.3 crore domestic flyers which was up from 8.4 crore in 2021 and 6.3 crore in 2020 (flights were suspended due to Covid).

There were also assumptions that the number is going to hit somewhere between 14.5-15 cr in the year 2023.