BENGALURU: Kempegowda International Airport (KIA) continues to register a healthy growth trend with 95.78 lakh flyers recorded here during the first quarter of this financial year. This marks a 36.8% increase over the corresponding period of the previous year, according to the Airports Authority of India (AAI).
The first quarterly air traffic report across India along with separate data for June has been released. The just concluded quarter reveals a 20.5% increase in flyers in India with a whopping 30.45 million passengers compared to the previous year’s figure of 25.27 million, data reveals.
Of the KIA traffic figures, international patronage has been huge. The airport recorded 11,16,385 flyers in three months compared to 7,55,090 last year. It marks a massive 47.8% increase. Of that, June alone contributed 3,81,739 passengers.
Domestic passengers too have shown a fair increase of 35.5%. Bengaluru saw 84,61,615 flyers up to June this year contrasted with last year’s 62, 46,695 flyers. KIA also recorded a 16.2% increase in Air Traffic Movements (all arrivals and departures) with 60,286 recorded.
Record flyers at HAL too
The HAL airport too witnessed an unprecedented increase in passengers with unprecedented VIP movement in April in connection with election campaigning, a key reason. As compared to 361 passengers from April to June 2022, the corresponding period this year witnessed 5,102 passengers, the data reveals. Last month alone had 1,045 flyers using HAL while it recorded nil usage during June last year.
In other parts of Karnataka, the state’s second busiest airport, Mangaluru, had a mere 1.2%increase over the previous fiscal with 4,62,590 passengers. The re-carpeting of the runway that caused the closure of the runway for 8.5 hours daily from March 10 to May 28 permitted only nominal patronage this fiscal. Hubballi airport saw 95,809 passengers, an increase of 40.9%.
Mysuru and Belagavi airports showed a dip in flyers. Mysuru saw a dip of 11.3% with 42,396 passengers this fiscal against 48, 411 last year while Belagavi saw a major dip of 39.2% with just 63,808 flyers as against 1,04,930 last year. The grounding of Go Air flights appears to have impacted these airports.