India’s taking off! Domestic air travel demand was on a steady rise globally until August when concerns over the Delta variant of the coronavirus reversed the trend in countries such as China, US, Japan, Australia and Brazil. However, in India, buoyed by vaccination drives and a drop in Covid cases, domestic traffic demand has continued its steady month-on-month climb since June, per recent data released by the International Air Transport Association (IATA), the global airlines’ trade body.
In India, the climb recommenced in June after a huge drop in April-May during the second Covid wave, which made India’s domestic air travel demand take the deepest plunge worldwide. Domestic air travel demand (measured in revenue passenger kilometres: number of kilometres flown by all passengers) was the lowest in May. It fell 71% as compared to the pre-Covid month of May 2019, showed IATA data. Only Japan with a 68.5% drop in demand as compared to May 2019 came close. But India caught up in August: its domestic travel demand rose to almost half of that in pre-Covid August 2019. It had been down 60% in July.
In August, domestic passenger traffic at Mumbai airport touched 1.4 million, which is what the airport had handled in March, the month air travel demand began its sharp drop due to the second wave, showed Airports Authority of India data.
In April, domestic passenger traffic at Mumbai was down to 0.9 million and in May, fell further to 0.4 million, before the trend reversed in June and domestic traffic increased to 0.6 million. Similarly, Delhi airport’s domestic passenger traffic had peaked in March with 2.9 million passengers and the airport inched close to that number in August with 2.6 million.
