Chennai: Plummeting to an all time low in recent history, the airport has seen a decline of almost 3.6 lakh domestic passengers between April and December 2012, marking a negative growth rate for the first time in years. This constitutes a significant 4.5 per cent drop in domestic passengers for airlines in the city. Given that the domestic flying market was booming between 2008 and 2011, every year had been witnessing an increase in air passengers at a rate of 10-17 percent, till last year. This dip in domestic air traffic was clear from the traffic trend report published by the Airports Authority of India (AAI) recently.
This will be of particular worry for the AAI, which owns and operates Chennai airport, because their primary reason for investing Rs 2,150 crore in constructing new terminals was because they were expecting a steep rise in air traffic. “The year-on-year numbers have not been very good,” agreed Airport Director H S Suresh, who took over during the last leg of the construction of the new terminals, leading up to its inauguration in January. He hoped that the numbers would improve as time passed by and the new terminals began to be used.
11/03/13 Daniel Thimmayya/New Indian Express
