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Prayagraj airport greets over 55,000 flyers in Sep this year
Prayagraj airport in India recorded over 55,000 passengers in September, the highest in four years. Despite a decrease in flights, passenger numbers remained high. Plans for direct flights to several cities are in the works.
The Prayagraj airport has recorded a footfall of over 55,000 passengers in September—the highest ever during the past four years since it became operational in January 2019.
This achievement is special given the fact that the number of flights during September this year, as compared to 2019 onwards, has decreased, said officials.
These figures are also important because September is generally considered off-season in the airline industry but this year, the number of passengers remained quite high in Prayagraj airport. This is also the first time since 2019 that the number of passengers has crossed 55,000 in September, the officials added.
Prayagraj Airport was made functional in January 2019 just before the formal start of the Kumbh fair. Since then, over 22 lakh passengers have used the airport, records show.
In September 2022, the airport had witnessed just around 38,000 passengers despite more aircraft operating during the month. As per the airport records, in September 2022, 628 flights operated from the airport as compared to 618 in September 2023.
During the off-season, the Prayagraj airport received an average of over 50,000 passengers every month between July and September 2023 with these three months in total registering a traffic of around 1.60 lakh passengers. This was much more than what the airport recorded during the same period in 2022 when July, August and September witnessed traffic of only 1.20 lakh passengers. In 2021, thew same period saw 1.20 lakh passengers while in 2020 the count was 97,143 and 88,596 in 2020 and 1.04 lakh in 2019.
Records show that while in September 2023, a total of 55,465 passengers used the airport, 38,350 did so in September 2022, 33,809 in September 2021, 32,061 in September 2020 and 33,074 passengers in September 2019.
Chairperson of the Prayagraj Airport Advisory Committee and BJP MP from Phulpur Keshari Devi Patel said that people’s inclination towards air travel was constantly on the rise.
She said that this was the reason there are plans for direct flights from Prayagraj to Guwahati, Chennai, Hyderabad, Jammu, Ahmedabad and Jaipur to be started in coming months.
