The Indian aviation market grew by 27.4% in March making it the fastest-growing aviation market in the world, according to the passenger traffic data released by the International Air Transport Association (IATA).
The IATA is an association of 260 airlines comprising 83% of global air traffic.
India’s growth rate was over six times more than that of the US, which clocked the second-highest growth rate of 4.1%.
“The domestic India market remains the fastest-expanding market, with growth edging up to 27.4% year-on-year, in March. Growth in the Indian domestic market is being propelled by the comparatively strong economic backdrop as well as sizeable increases in services,” the IATA said in a statement.
The average flight frequencies within India, it said, are scheduled to increase by 11.5% year-on-year in 2016.
Indian domestic airlines carried 23 million passengers in the first three months of 2016 as compared to 18.5 million during the corresponding period last year thereby registering a growth of 24.03%, according to the data released by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA).
“India’s annual domestic Revenue Passenger Kilometer (RPK) growth rate has now been in double digits for nineteen consecutive months. The combination of such rapid growth in India and slower (even negative) growth in other similarly-sized domestic markets has seen India overtake the others in terms of seasonally adjusted domestic RPKs over the past year or so, most recently Brazil, which it surpassed in March,” the IATA said.
Globally, the overall domestic demand rose 3.7% in March this year compared to March 2015, driven primarily by performance in the two largest markets, the US — which accounts for two of every five domestic passengers–and China, the IATA said.
However, India accounted for only 1.2% in the over all global domestic traffic. Adrian Wilson Jersey