59% growth in passenger traffic at Mumbai airport in July

A Mumbai airport spokesperson said approximately 500,000 passengers travelled over 4,000 plus flights during the weekends alone in July. In June, 300,000 passengers travelled on 2,700 plus flights during the weekends

Higher domestic flight capacity and easing of travel restrictions locally have accelerated passenger traffic with Mumbai’s Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport (CSMIA) registered a 59% increase in it in July as compared to June. Officials said approximately 1.1 million passengers flew on at least 1,400 domestic and international destinations from Mumbai last month.

T2 Terminal at Mumbai airport. (HT file)

A Mumbai airport spokesperson said approximately 500,000 passengers travelled over 4,000 plus flights during the weekends alone in July. In June, 300,000 passengers travelled on 2,700 plus flights during the weekends.

Looking at the surge in passenger traffic and easing of travel restrictions, CSMIA reintroduced flights to Bareilly, Visakhapatnam, Tirupati, Ajmer and Porbandar.

“The gradual opening of offices is complemented with an increase in the flight capacity, which has been the other factor for sequential growth from CSMIA. Weekends saw a majority of passengers travelling to Delhi, Bengaluru and Hyderabad destinations from CSMIA in the domestic sector and Doha, Newark and Dubai destinations in the international sector,” the spokesperson said.

According to the rating agency ICRA, July 2021 witnessed a 132% year-on-year growth in domestic passenger traffic as Covid-19 cases continued to dip during the month. Domestic passenger traffic also grew around 56-57% (at around 4.8-4.9 million) in July, compared to around 3.1 million in June. According to ICRA, the airlines’ capacity deployment last month was around 90% higher than in July 2020. There were around 47,200 departures in July this year against 24,770 departures in the same month last year.