Tier-II cities driving growth in domestic aviation sector
There has been a continuous growth in the domestic aviation industry in India, particularly after the Regional Connectivity Scheme was flagged off. The momentum of this growth is now picking up Tier II cities, so much so it has left behind some major national and international airports in growth rate.
With new facilities up and running, the Tier II cities such as Ranchi, Surat, Vijayawada, Bhubaneswar and Varanasi saw a notable rise in passenger traffic last year. According to the Airports Authority of India (AAI), the cities are now contributing to aviation growth in the country.
The 26 pc growth in the domestic aviation sector was largely because of the demand that is being generated from these Tier-II cities and the addition of new routes and services, an AAI official told the Indian press. The regional connectivity scheme is another factor for the rise in traffic, the AAI official added.
As per reports in March, Ranchi saw a 90 pc growth in passenger traffic as compared to the same period last year.
In Bhubaneswar, passenger growth rate in March has been around 53 pc, while 86 pc in Mangalore, over 85 pc in Vijayawada and more than 69 pc in Amritsar.
Growth in Surat has surpassed other cities with a rate of 179 pc, registering 65,373 passenger movements in March as against 23,367 during the month last year, according to the latest AAI data.
These Tier II cities have shown a growth rate that is significantly higher even in comparison to Tier I cities such as Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Bangalore and Chennai.
Delhi’s domestic passenger growth rate stood at 18.7 pc, while for Mumbai it was 17.8 pc although both these airports at present are facing a capacity constraint. Bangalore has seen the highest growth rate of 54.6 pc among the major airports.
Reports have emerged of various Indian carriers having plans of expanding their fleet with orders placed for over 900 aircraft to be inducted in the next 10 years.
According to an Economic Survey, India is the third largest and the fastest growing domestic aviation market in the world in terms of number of domestic tickets sold.
Earlier this month the International Air Transport Association (IATA) had said that India’s domestic demand , revenue passenger kilometres (RPK), was highest amongst major aviation markets like Australia, Brazil, China, Japan, Russia and the United States. India’s domestic passenger traffic growth was followed by that of China at 15 pc and Russian Federation at 5.9 pc.
