IATA report says -India emerging as key aviation market

India is fast emerging as a key global aviation market, according to the latest market analysis report of the International Air Transport Association ( ATA).

India's domestic air travel has continued to grow robustly and as of February, it was a mere 2.2 per cent shy of reaching pre-pandemic levels levels measured by passenger revenue kilometres (PRK).

The India domestic passenger market also led the rest of the domestic markets in the passenger load factor (PLF) metric in the report which includes the US, China and Japanese domestic markets. It has been the top domestic market measured by PLF for the last four months achieving PLFs of 81.6 per cent in February, 85.2 per cent in January, 88.9 per cent in December 2022,and 87.9 per cent in November 2022.

Globally, traffic is now at 84.9 per cent of February 2019 levels. Total trafficin February 2023, based on RPKs, rose 55.5 per cent compared to February 2022.

The report added, "Asia-Pacific airlines had a 378.7 per cent increase in February 2023 traffic compared to February 2022, maintaining the very positive momentum of the past few months since the lifting of travel restrictions in the region. Capacity rose 176.4 per cent and the load factor increased 34.9 percentage points to 82.5 per cent, the second highest among the regions."

Domestic air passenger traffic for all markets measured for February rose 25.2 percent compared to one year ago. Total February 2023 domestic traffic was at 97.2 per cent of the February 2019 level.

-B