Domestic air travel hits all-time high, surpasses pre-Covid level in April 2023

India’s domestic air travel has seen massive improvement as it hit an "all-time high" of 4,56,082 passengers in a single day on April 30 and surpassed the pre-Covid average.

“India’s domestic air traffic reached a new height with an all-time high on Sunday when a total of 9,13,336 passengers travelled on 5,947 flights,” Ministry of Civil Aviation said.

Civil Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia said that the skyrocketing passenger number is a sign of the country's rising prosperity.

According to the ministry, 4,56,082 people flew on 2,978 flights on Sunday. Before Covid, the average daily domestic passenger number was 3,98,579.

Domestic carriers took 128.93 lakh passengers in March, which is a rise of 21.4 per cent compared to the year-ago period.

During the January-March period, the airlines carried 375.04 lakh passengers, according to the latest data from the aviation regulator DGCA.

Recently, a report by the International Air Transport Association (IATA) in February showed that the air traffic hit 85.7 per cent of pre-COVID levels in the year 2022.

“The India domestic passenger market also led the rest of the domestic markets in the passenger load factor (PLF) metric in the report which includes the US, China and Japanese domestic markets. It has been the top domestic market measured by PLF for the last four months achieving PLFS of 81.6 per cent in February, 85.2 per cent in January, 88.9 per cent in December 2022, and 87.9 per cent in November 2022,” the report stated.

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