India’s air traffic growth slows down in 2019, was 1.6% in Sept: IATA

India’s air traffic increased by just 1.6 per cent in September compared to 4.5 per cent in August this year, global airlines body IATA said on Thursday, adding that the pace of growth has “slowed significantly” throughout 2019 due to weaker economic activity and Jet Airways bankruptcy.

“Growth in domestic India RPKs (revenue passenger kilometres) eased to 1.6 per cent year-on-year, from 4.5 per cent observed in August,” said a press release of the International Air Transport Association (IATA).

In comparison, Chinese passenger traffic grew by 8.9 per cent and 9.8 per cent in September and August, respectively, as per the IATA.

RPK is a measure of actual passenger traffic that is calculated by multiplying the number of passengers to the number of kilometres they have travelled.