The Indian aviation market is emerging as a key market: IATA

According to the International Air Transport Association’s (IATA) most recent market study report, The Indian aviation market is emerging as a key market and India is quickly becoming a significant international aviation market.

Domestic air travel in India has been steadily increasing, and as of February, it was just 2.2% away from pre-pandemic levels as measured by passenger revenue kilometres (PRK).

The US, China, and Japanese domestic passenger markets are included in the report’s passenger load factor (PLF) metrics, although the Indian domestic passenger market outperformed them all. It has held the top spot for the last four months in the domestic market as assessed by PLF, with PLFs of 81.6 percent in February, 85.2 percent in January, 88.9 percent in December 2022, and 87.9 percent in November 2022.

Global traffic is now at 84.9% of February 2019 levels. According to RPKs, total traffic increased by 55.5% from February 2022 to February 2023.

The study states that “Asia-Pacific airlines had a 378.7% increase in traffic in February 2023 compared to February 2022, maintaining the highly positive trend of the preceding several months following the lifting of travel restrictions in the region.” The capacity in this region has increased by 176.4%, while the load factor has increased by 34.9% to 82.5%.

When compared to February of last year, domestic air passenger traffic increased in all markets by 25.2%. February 2023 had a 97.2% increase in domestic travel over February 2019.

Only 35 to 40 million Indians are thought to fly annually at the moment. Even though pre-COVID India had roughly 168 million air travellers, many of them are frequent travellers, according to World Bank data. This is far less than China, which had 660 million people go by air during the same time period in 2019. China has a population that is comparable to that of the United States. Additionally, Chinese airlines operate about five times as many aircraft.

With over 300 aircraft and over 35% of all seat kilometres now available on flights into and out of Indian airports, IndiGo is the country’s largest airline. IndiGo offers about 48% of all flights in both the local and foreign markets of India, as measured by flight frequencies.

Just last month, rival Air India revealed a record-breaking order for 470 aircraft, including 250 from the European manufacturer Airbus and 220 from its American rival Boeing. The agreement outperformed orders for 420 aircraft from IndiGo in 2017 and 460 aircraft from American Airlines in 2011.

Along with aircraft makers, foreign airlines are interested in the Indian aviation market.

Singapore Airlines is one of them. After Tata Sons acquired Air India, it announced a USD 267 million investment in the redesigned airline, giving it a 25.1% stake in the new Air India group. This money is in addition to what it has already invested in Vistara Airlines, which will combine with Air India.