Domestic air passenger traffic likely to continue its negative trend in March this year

Mumbai: Domestic air passenger traffic is likely to continue its negative trend in March this year, despite aggressive fare cuts by airlines since January this year, according to initial estimates provided by travel agents. According to a report in Economic Times by Mithun Roy, as per data released by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), airlines witnessed a seven per cent drop in passengers during February this year compared to last year. In January this year, the number of domestic passengers fell to 3.32 million, compared to 3.33 million last year. However, DGCA will be bringing out passenger figures for March this year by month-end.
According to Ankur Bhatia, MD, Amadeus India, “Though domestic airlines have cut fares by almost half in the January-February period, the number of passengers keeps declining. There is no recovery in passenger load.” Interestingly, when passenger traffic data is falling, online bookings in the Asia Pacific have increased by 17 per cent. In India, almost 4.5 million bookings, or 11 per cent of all air bookings, were made online — a 56 per cent increase from the previous year. According to PhoCusWright’s Indian Online Travel, online travel revenues in India are expected to reach USD 5.7 billion by 2010. According to Dataquest, online travel agencies are together expected to account for a third of all online transactions by 2010.
10/04/09 TravelBizMonitor

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Categories: Indian Aviation- In General Apr 2009