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NEW DELHI: Domestic air passenger traffic showed a marginal sequential increase in the week ended 6 November amid a revival in travel sentiment during the festival season.
Average number of daily fliers rose to 291,000 in the week ended 6 November from 288,000 a week before, broking firm ICICI Securities said in a report on Monday.
Average number of departures increased during the week under review to 2,593 from 2,356 during the previous week, while number of fliers per departure declined to 112 from 122 a week ago.
Interestingly, domestic air passenger traffic has seen significant growth since June, with the easing of lockdown restrictions following a steady decline in fresh covid-19 cases, giving more people to confidence to undertake travel.
Domestic air passenger traffic saw an annual 5.45% growth during September.
Around 7.07 million passengers took to the skies in September compared with 6.7 million in August, according to data from the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA).
Scheduled airlines have been since mid-October allowed to operate up to 100% of their pre-covid capacity on domestic flights after the government did away with a capacity cap imposed on airlines since the resumption of flights in May 2020 following two months of lockdown.
This is expected to boost capacity going ahead. However, rising prices of aviation turbine fuel (ATF), which have surged about 13.8% month-on-month, and 95.8% in the last one year in tandem with global crude oil prices, have been a dampener.
ATF or jet fuel makes up 30-40% of the cost of running an airline in India and an increase in prices will hurt profit margins of airlines which have reported huge losses over the last few quarters due to the covid-19 pandemic.
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