BENGALURU: The Covid second wave has put paid to the hopes of revival of air traffic, which was showing an uptick in January last year. Airports across Karnataka reported poor passenger traffic for April this year, which was a clear dip from the figures for February and March.
This is because airports are running with limited operations. During April last year, when the first wave was raging, air operations had been completely shut.According to the Airport Authority of India, airports across the country carried 1,24,60,127 passengers -- 1,10,85,114 domestic and 13,75,013 international -- in April this year, as compared to just 61,681 in the same period last year.
Bengaluru’s Kempegowda International Airport (KIA) recorded 11,47,061 passengers for the month. In March, it recorded 14,90,908, including 84,145 international passengers. February had 15,14,719 with 75,633 international passengers. In January, the airport saw 15,66,521 passengers.
The only other international airport in the state is in Mangaluru which had 1,07,454 passengers in January this year. February marked a very minor improvement with just 33 extra passengers (1,07,487). It dipped to 93,578 in March and went down further to 72,257 in April.In 2019, KIA had a good growth rate of 4.1 per cent over the previous year with 33.65 million passengers.