- Thursday, April 25, 2024
By: Shubham Ghosh
IN a reversal of the prevailing scenario, some second-tier cities in India that are linked with financial capital Mumbai have seen their air passenger traffic surpassing the pre-Covid-19 pandemic numbers.
According to a report in the Times of India, such cities include Rajkot, Visakhapatnam, Jabalpur, Gorakhpur, Aurangabad, Kandla, Madurai, Srinagar and Chandigarh.
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Rajkot, which is located in the western state of Gujarat and an hour-long flight distance from Mumbai, has not only recovered from the pandemic but even surpassed the pre-Covid passenger numbers.
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Rajkot, according to the report, has seen the highest growth in passenger traffic — 107 per cent — when pre-Covid numbers from January 2020 are compared with the current traffic.
“Wth the ease in travel restrictions across India and more and more travellers being double vaccinated, Mumbai airport has witnessed over nine domestic destinations surpassing pre-Covid levels,” the daily quoted sources in Mumbai International Airport Ltd as saying.
In the first 15 days of December, about 16,000 passengers took the flight between Mumbai and Rajkot, which was a 107 per cent growth as compared to the number of passengers who flew between the two cities in the first 15 days of January 2020.
Jabalpur in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh is the second with 73 per cent growth as compared to the pre-Covid times, according to MIAL.
But when one compares Jabalpur’s passenger traffic in December with that in January 2019, the growth stands at 98 per cent.
Visakhapatnam in the south-eastern state of Andhra Pradesh saw 68 per cent growth in the same period, the report added.
Other cities that have seen similar growth are Aurangabad (Maharashtra), Chandigarh (union territory), Gorakhpur (Uttar Pradesh), Kandla (Gujarat), Madurai (Tamil Madu) and Srinagar (Jammu and Kashmir).
