Vijay Mohan
Tribune News Service
Chandigarh, December 19
While the aviation sector across the country witnessed a decline in passenger and cargo traffic during April to October, there has been a significant increase in traffic both for passengers and cargo movement at major airports in the northern region.
According to data released by the Ministry of Civil Aviation for the period April to October 2019, there has been a decline of over 5% in cargo movement at major airports across the country as compared to the period under review last year. On the other hand, Chandigarh airport witnessed a 68.5% increase in cargo movement during this period while Amritsar saw a 51.6% increase. The hike at Srinagar airport, however, was just 0.1%.
As many as 32 aerodromes across the country are categorised as ‘major’ by the Airports Authority of India (AAI), out of which the above-mentioned three are in this region. The AAI manages a total of 126 airports across the country.
As far as passenger traffic is concerned, Chandigarh witnessed an increase of 14.6% while Srinagar and Amritsar witnessed an increase of 11.1% and 3.2%, respectively. The recent upgrade of the Chandigarh and Amritsar airport, with capacity augmentation and introduction of new flights, as well as business trends in the region are cited as reasons for the upswing. At some major airports like Delhi and Mumbai, passenger traffic declined by 4.1% and 6.5%, respectively, and freight traffic dipped by 5.2% and 9.7%, respectively.
Overall, the country saw a decline of about 1% in this segment. While some airports in other parts of the country saw an increase in both passenger and cargo movement, there was a decline in this sector at other airports. Jet Airways’ shutting down its operations, grounding of Boeing 737 Max aircraft for technical reasons and a general slowdown in the global economy are among other reasons cited for the overall dip in traffic.
According to the ministry’s data, 19,93,865 metric tonnes cargo was moved from April to October this year at major airports as compared to 21,01,223 metric tonnes for the same period last year. The passenger traffic at these airports was 18,58,90,821 this year vis-à-vis 18,75,93,768 last year.
