Domestic traffic at Chennai airport low despite tenfold increase in flights

CHENNAI: Domestic passenger traffic at Chennai airport is increasing but is sluggish compared to Bengaluru and Hyderabad airports. Nine months after domestic flights resumed, the monthly passenger traffic at Chennai airport is 44% of pre-Covid levels against 57% in Bengaluru and 60% in Hyderabad.
Chennai airport handled around 6.73lakh passengers in December 2020 and around 7 lakh in January 2021. Bengaluru’s monthly domestic passenger of around 15lakh is more than double that of Chennai, while it is around 10 lakh in Hyderabad.
Bengaluru airport handled 12.57 lakh domestic passengers in November and 14.31 lakh in December. In Hyderabad, passenger numbers rose from 8.86lakh in November to 10lakh in December.
While Bengaluru’s monthly domestic passengers has crossed Chennai’s pre-Covid-19 level, Hyderabad is edging closer to that figure. The two airports had been ahead of Chennai before Covid-19 struck because of the flexibility of the private management in promoting them and because of better business traffic to those cities.