The International Air Transport Association said that India recorded the fourth highest number of passengers taking off in 2016, up two places from the previous year, overtaking the UK and Brazil.
A shade over 130 million flyers took off from India, including domestic, international and connecting, last year. Globally, 3.80 billion passengers took off in 2016 (half domestic, 35% international and 15% connecting) -up from 3.50 billion in 2015.
The pecking order of the top three - the US, China and Japan - remained unchanged, but there was a shakeup after that with India a part of it. At this rate, India will soon be at the third spot in terms of number of passengers taking off by overtaking Japan. In total passenger terms, India saw 152 million passengers flying last year, with 99 million flying within the country and 53 million internationally.
The big movers on this year's rankings are the key emerging markets of India and Indonesia. India has jumped up two places to the fourth ranking with 131million departures in 2016 and, with stellar passenger growth of 20% year-on-year, continues to close in fast on Japan. Just three years ago India held the eighth ranking,” says IATA.
Indonesia also moved up two positions, to the sixth spot, in 2016. IATA 's takeoff numbers are at 131 million as it includes all of the 99 million domestic flyers; 27 million people flying out of India and only a part of the 26 million international flyers to India who took off to take more flights last year. However, the growth is coming amid an infra crunch -especially at busy metro airports - that is getting worse by the day due to the over 20% rise in traffic that India has been witnessing on a month-on-month basis for almost two years now. Air traffic congestion has made hovering common at Delhi and Mumbai. These two airports hardly have any free slots available for new flights, with Mumbai completely choked.
