Guwahati: Domestic air traffic in the country continues to record growth. The passengers carried by domestic airlines during January to October 2022 were 9.88 crores against 6.20 crores during the corresponding period of previous year thereby registering an annual growth of 59.16 percent and monthly growth of 26.95 percent in October.

According to the data released by aviation regulator DGCA on Tuesday, nearly 1.14 crores of passengers were carried by the domestic airlines during October in the country however on the other hand the number of domestic passengers was 89.85 lakh during the same period last year.

The passenger load factor or occupancy of the airlines remained on the higher side in the range of 75 to 85 percent.

There was also an addition of a new airline named Akasa Air and it marked the occupancy of 77.5 percent during October. Spicejet recorded the highest occupancy of 88.1 percent while Indigo witnessed 82.1 percent passenger load factor during October.

Air India had 82.7 percent and GoFirst had 86.7 percent occupancy during the month.

Industry sources said that the number of Covid 19 cases have recorded a downward trend in the last couple of weeks resulting in restoring normalcy in the aviation traffic. Moreover,the government has also gradually done away with various restrictions.

Recently, wearing of masks in flight has been made non-mandatory. Earliers, the aviation regulator announced the removal of lower and upper limits on airfares after discussions among the stakeholders including government authorities and airlines.

Recently Royal Bhutan Airlines, Druk Air relaunched its services from Guwahati to Singapore which will further increase the domestic air traffic. Since Druk Air will be the only flight connecting Northeast India to Singapore, the domestic air traffic of northeast will also be more.

Recently PM Narendra Modi inaugurated the Donyi Polo Airport of Arunachal Pradesh on November 19 which will further improve the connectivity of northeast from the rest of India.

It is likely that an expected growth of air traffic will be witnessed.

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