India emerges as world’s 5th biggest aviation market; Mumbai-Delhi among busiest airport pairs in 2024: IATA

admin — Mon, 04 Aug 2025 14:03:00 +0000

Flights are seen parked at Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport (BOM).
| Photo Credit: ANI

India emerged as the world’s fifth biggest aviation market, handling 241 million passengers, while Mumbai-Delhi was one of the busiest airport pairs in 2024, according to data released by global airlines’ grouping IATA.

The International Airport Transport Association (IATA), which represents around 350 airlines, on Monday released the latest edition of the World Air Transport Statistics (WATS) for 2024.

India saw 211 million air passengers last year, a growth of 11.1% compared to 2023, ahead of Japan, which handled 205 million passengers with an annual rise of 18.6%.

“The U.S. remains the world’s biggest aviation market with 876 million passengers in 2024 on the strength of its domestic market, growing 5.2% year-on-year.

“China was the second-biggest passenger market, with 741 million passengers, a growth of 18.7% compared to 2023,” it said in a release.

While India stood at the 5th place, the U.K. at the 3rd spot (261 million passengers) and Spain at the 4th position (241 million).

The figures include all international and domestic passengers departing or arriving in each country.

Among the top 10 airport pairs, Mumbai-Delhi was the 7th busiest, carrying 5.9 million passengers in 2024.

“Asia Pacific dominated the ranking for the world’s busiest airport pairs, with Jeju-Seoul (CJU-GMP) the most popular route globally, with 13.2 million passengers flying between the two airports in 2024.

“In the top 10, only one airport pair — Jeddah-Riyadh (JED-RUH) — was not in the Asia Pacific region,” IATA said.

As per the grouping, international premium class travel — business and first class — grew 11.8%, outpacing growth in global economy travel of 11.5%.

In 2024, the total number of international premium class travellers was 116.9 million or 6% of the total international passengers.

“Leading the regions in terms of percentage growth was Asia Pacific with a year-on-year growth of 22.8%, with 21 million premium passengers — although it was outpaced in growth by economy class passenger numbers, up 28.6% to 500.8 million.

“Growth in premium travel exceeded economy class travel in Europe, Latin America, the Middle East and North America. Europe remained the largest market for international premium travel, with 39.3 million premium passengers, while premium travellers as a percentage of all travellers were highest in the Middle East at 14.7%,” IATA said.

Last year, narrow-body planes of Boeing and Airbus were among the most used ones.

Boeing’s B737 alone flew 10 million flights with 2.4 trillion Available Seat Kilometres (ASKs) in 2024.

“This was followed by the Airbus A320 with 7.9 million flights and 1.7 trillion ASKs and the Airbus A321 with 3.4 million flights and 1.1 trillion ASKs,” it said.

ASK is an indicator of capacity.

Published – August 04, 2025 07:33 pm IST

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India Becomes World’s 3rd Largest Domestic Airline Market: Report

admin — Thu, 20 Jun 2024 11:28:09 +0000

India is now the third-largest domestic airline market in the world. (Representational Image)

New Delhi:

Driven by robust growth in the aviation sector in the last decade, India is now the third-largest domestic airline market in the world, up from 5th position 10 years ago.

Ten years ago, India was the smallest market with around 8 million seats, followed by Indonesia at 4th and Brazil at 3rd place, and the US and China occupying the top two positions.

Today, the US and China remain the largest domestic aviation markets.

“However, India is surpassing the Brazilian and Indonesian domestic markets to become the third-largest domestic market with airline capacity of 15.6 million seats in April 2024,” according to OAG data.

India’s capacity growth rate of seats over a 10-year average is the highest, growing at 6.9 per cent annually.

“India is the fastest growing market across all five domestic markets we considered. China was close behind with annual growth of 6.3 per cent between 2014 and 2024, and there is a much smaller growth rate in the US and Indonesia,” according to the data.

According to the OAG report, another interesting metric to consider across these large domestic markets is low-cost carrier (LCC) capacity share.

In April 2024, LCCs accounted for 78.4 per cent of domestic airline capacity in India, the highest LCC share of any of these five domestic markets.

“In the last 10 years, IndiGo has almost doubled their market share, from 32 per cent of capacity in 2014 to 62 per cent today. While the rest of the market has barely grown, averaging just 0.7 per cent a year, IndiGo has a domestic capacity growth rate of 13.9 per cent annually,” the report mentioned.

The country has seen robust growth under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, paving the way for shaping the future of the aviation industry for the next 25 years.

On November 19 last year, airlines in India flew 4,56,910 domestic passengers. This was the highest single-day air traffic since the pandemic hit, marking a remarkable 7.4 per cent surge above pre-Covid averages, as per the Civil Aviation Ministry’s data.

According to the government, the number of airports in the country has increased to 157 from 74 in the last 10 years.

More than 91 lakh passengers availed the facility of Digi Yatra, and over 35 lakh users downloaded the app in 2023.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

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India Aviation Market – Artifex.News

India emerges as world’s 5th biggest aviation market; Mumbai-Delhi among busiest airport pairs in 2024: IATA

India Becomes World’s 3rd Largest Domestic Airline Market: Report