India records highest domestic air passenger growth: IATA
02 Sep 2011
New Delhi: India recorded the highest domestic passenger growth this July at over 20 per cent, followed by Brazil, according to the International Air Transport Association (IATA) which also said that global passenger travel was up 5.9 per cent over the same period last year.
"Brazil and India recorded the highest growth rates of 17.8 per cent and 20.6 per cent respectively. Both were stronger than June's performance," IATA announced in its traffic results.
In most other countries, domestic air travel demand remained "much more sluggish than that for international travel", the latest IATA figures showed.
American domestic market, which represents half the world market, grew 2.1 per cent compared to July 2010, while China, with the second biggest domestic market (18 per cent of the world), "slowed abruptly" to just a 5.1 per cent rise.
In the international market, Asia-Pacific carriers had a capacity increase of 5.8 per cent which exceeded the demand growth of 4.9 per cent.
"Airlines in the (Asia-Pacific) region are still adjusting to two major challenges -- slower growth in China and continuing post-earthquake/tsunami weakness in Japan", the IATA said, adding that passenger load factors fell slightly to 80.2 per cent.
In the freight market, Asia-Pacific carriers continued to "show the weakest freight performance" with a 3.6 per cent decline compared to July last. Middle East and Latin American carriers showed the strongest performance with gains of 8.4 and 8.2 per cent respectively, the figures showed.