Share of non-metro traffic at Bengaluru airport jumps to 64 percent in April-January

MUMBAI: Kempegowda International Airport Bangalore (KIAB) has seen a significant jump in the share of non-metro traffic to 64 per cent in the April-January period of the current fiscal, the private airport operator said on Thursday.

The share of non-metro traffic in the 10 months of the financial year 2019-20 was 55 percent, Bangalore International Airport Ltd (BIAL) said in a statement.

A daily average of 270 flights, carrying an average of 30,000 passengers per day, departed to non-metro cities in January 2021, BIAL said.

It attributed the significant increase in passenger traffic to non-metro cities to renewed confidence among passengers on hygiene and safety of air travel amid the pandemic.

During the previous month, budget carrier IndiGo commenced its flights to Jorhat and Gorakhpur while SpiceJet commenced services to Jharsuguda.

It said the airport now connects 61 destinations across the country, indicating a positive trend in air travel to non-metro cities.

Prior to the pandemic hitting the aviation sector, KIAB was catering to 58 destinations, the airport operator said in the statement.

It will soon have flights to five new destinations — Rajkot, Durgapur (SpiceJet) and Dibrugarh (IndiGo) later this month, followed by Agra and Kurnool in March, as per the statement.

Silchar, Darbhanga, Amritsar, Nashik and Jabalpur were the other new routes that were launched earlier in 2020-21, taking the overall tally of new routes during the current fiscal to 13, BIAL said.

Meanwhile, the improved regional connectivity has led to a three-fold increase in transfer passengers, further strengthening the Bangalore airport's position as the new gateway to India, said the statement.