[orc]The Director General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) releases both domestic and international air traffic reports every month. According to these reports, the domestic air traffic has been increasing continuously & reached 998.9 lakh in the year 2016. The total domestic air traffic is slated to cross 1000 lakh (10 crore) in 2017. The top 10 routes account for more than 30% of all the domestic air traffic.
The Director General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) releases both domestic and international air traffic reports every month. DGCA provides information about traffic in various routes in these reports. Currently, the total domestic air traffic is more than 90 lakh passengers every month with more than 300 routes.
Domestic Air Traffic crossed 1 crore passengers in May 2017
The total domestic air traffic in 2015 stood at 810.7 lakh which increased to 998.9 lakh in 2016, an increase of close to 25%. The total domestic air traffic is slated to cross 10 crore in the year 2017 with the first seven months accounting for 657.2 lakh passengers.
The monthly domestic air traffic figures followed more or less a similar trend each year. The passenger figures dropped in February compared to January in every year. The figures increased continuously till May again to drop in June. The total number of domestic air passengers crossed 100 lakh (1 crore) for the first time in May 2017.
10 routes account for close to 30% of all Domestic Air Traffic
Between April & December of 2015, the top 10 routes accounted for 195 lakh domestic passengers, which is more than 30% of the total domestic air traffic during that period. The busiest route is the Mumbai – Delhi route, from the financial capital to the administrative capital. Delhi-Bengaluru had the 2nd most number of passengers during this period. Each of the top 10 routes accounted for more than 10 lakh passengers during this period. Mumbai was a part of 6 of the top 10 routes while Delhi was a part of five of them.
In the year 2016, the top 10 routes remained more or less the same except for Delhi-Pune which made its way to the top 10 pushing Mumbai-Hyderabad out of the top 10.
In the first seven months of 2017, Mumbai-Hyderabad was back into the top 10 while Mumbai-Ahmedabad was out of the top 10.
There are more than 10 Routes with less than 100 passengers in a month
Except for January 2017, there were a minimum of 10 routes with less than 100 passengers in the entire month till July 2017. There were less than 1000 passengers in more than 20% of all the routes in most months while there were less than 10000 passengers in more than half the routes. Goa-Tirupati was one of the common routes with less than 100 passengers in the month. The routes with less than 100 passengers a month were spread across the country and not specific to a region. Some of these routes are new ones introduced as a part of the UDAN scheme.
| Month | Number of Routes with <100 Passengers | Number of Routes with <1000 Passengers | Number of Routes with <10000 Passengers | Total Number of Routes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| January 2017 | 9 | 48 | 160 | 311 |
| February 2017 | 25 | 68 | 187 | 332 |
| March 2017 | 40 | 85 | 198 | 346 |
| April 2017 | 17 | 64 | 182 | 333 |
| May 2017 | 14 | 59 | 173 | 330 |
| June 2017 | 28 | 84 | 199 | 356 |
| July 2017 | 25 | 91 | 213 | 367 |
1 Comment
The number of routes with less than 100 passengers will go down.As of now people are not completely aware of these routes .As time progresses people and airlines will adjust the frequency and timing of the routes and over time as people realize the convenience they will start adopting more and more services along the less served routes.