Mumbai: India’s domestic passenger traffic has dropped 37% since January 1, with less than two lakh people flying daily, which takes the traffic back to the volumes handled in July last year.
An estimated 30% drop in air passengers is expected in the final quarter of this fiscal, according to aviation observers.
On January 11 – a Tuesday, usually the leanest day of the week – the daily traffic dipped to 1.8 lakh, shows ministry of civil aviation data. It’s a huge drop when compared to the traffic seen in the past two months. From November 6, 2021 to January 3, over 3 lakh domestic passengers boarded flights every single day.
“An analysis of traffic data of top four private airports – Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru and Hyderabad – which accounted for about 90% of air traffic handled by private airports and about 50% of all passenger traffic last fiscal, indicates that Omicron could push air traffic recovery into fiscal 2024,” said credit rating company CRISIL.
