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Subhash Gupte, Vice Chairman UB Group and Director Kingfisher Airlines, at the launch of new Sholapur-Mumbai services on February 10. The new route bucks the trend for 18% domestic declines – but given the extraordinary growth achieved in 2007 in reality demand has merely returned to the same levels as in 2006. |
India’s domestic traffic continued to fall during the last three months of 2008 with passenger numbers on domestic flights down 14% in October, 21% in November and 19% in December. However, given the extraordinary growth rates achieved in 2007 what this means is that domestic demand in 2008 has returned to the same levels as in 2006.
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Source: Airports Authority of India |
A few airports bucked the trend in December with domestic traffic at Guwahati up 13% while smaller airports such as Bagdogra (+65%) and Chandigarh (+36%) also showed gains. Among the largest airports the new airport at Bangalore/Bengaluru saw domestic demand fall 30%.
International markets still buoyant
While the domestic market endures a difficult time international traffic is still growing, up 12% in October and also up in both November and December.
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Source: Airports Authority of India |
In December when international traffic was up just 3.6% overall the airports with the biggest growth were Calicut (+56%), Cochin (+17%), Hyderabad (+16%) and Bangalore (+14%). The country’s biggest international airport at Mumbai saw a decline of 3.3%. Mumbai remained India’s busiest airport in 2008 handling 24.34 million passengers, a reduction of 3.6% on 2007.
Kingfisher now leading domestic airline
According to figures published by the Indian civil aviation ministry Kingfisher was the leading carrier of domestic passengers in January 2009.
Airline | Passengers January 2009 |
Market share January 2009 |
Kingfisher | 919,000 | 27.6% |
Jet Airways / Jet Lite | 837,000 | 25.1% |
Air India | 550,000 | 16.7% |
IndiGo | 457,000 | 13.8% |
Spicejet | 393,000 | 11.8% |
GoAir | 81,000 | 2.4% |
Paramount | 71,000 | 2.1% |
MDLR | 13,000 | 0.4% |
Total | 3,321,000 | 100% |
Source: Indian Civil Aviation Ministry |
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