Spike in arrivals from abroad at airport in Nov, Dec

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TIMES NEWS NETWORK

10.01.2022

Chennai: The surge in Covid-19 cases has drastically affected travel plans of many in the last few days, but November and December raked in good passenger traffic for airlines and the city airport.

Passenger traffic, especially international, increased at a faster rate despite restrictions and a need for testing, in the last two months. However, domestic traffic growth remained sluggish.

The airport handled more international travelers after Delhi and Mumbai while it lagged far behind in domestic traffic than the five other metro airports. The airport handled 10. 75lakh passengers in November and 12. 93lakh passengers in December. There were 1. 82lakh international travellers in November while it increased to 2. 46lakh passengers in December. The number of domestic passengers was 8. 93lakh in November and 10. 4lakh in December.

There is a faster growth of international passengers (up by 65%) when compared to the same period last year.

An airport official said that there is a good demand for international travel because people from other towns are boarding flights in Chennai. "The launch of flights to Singapore gave a boost to passenger traffic,” he added.

S Bhaskar of Travel Agents Federation of India (TAFI) said flights to UAE, Saudi Arab and Singapore are packed, while Maldives remain popular. “The demand is huge on the international sector because of limited number of flights,” he added. However, there is a lull in the domestic sector because airlines have cut frequencies or are combining flights based on the traffic on many sectors.

"Airlines have withdrawn many flights to smaller cities and have redeployed them on profitable routes. There are not enough flights to Port Blair, Mumbai, Ahmedabad as there used to be earlier,” he added. Airlines and airports authorities expect a dip in the number of domestic passengers in the coming days. “People are likely to put off their leisure travel plans after the Pongal holidays because of a surge in Covid-19 cases,” said an airline official.