23.2% growth in August for India’s domestic airline market

India’s domestic airline market has posted double-digit annual growth of 23.2 per cent in August, as reported by IATA. This comes with sizeable increase in real consumer spending and partly because airlines are adding airport-pairs and flight frequencies, which cuts journey times for passengers and has the same stimulatory effect on demand as a large cut in fares. Domestic air travel, on the whole, grew by 4.3 per cent year-on-year in August, with the three-speed market still evident. On the other hand, international traffic flown by Asia Pacific airlines, the second largest international region, rose by a solid 5.6 per cent year-on-year in August. But there are ongoing signs of Asian passengers being put off by terrorism in Europe since traffic on the Europe-Asia route grew by just 1.5 per cent year-on-year in July, and it remains the slowest growing of the ‘big-four’ international routes so far this year. Asian leisure travellers are also substituting to destinations closer to home: international traffic growth within Asia accelerated to a six month-high of 9.9 per cent year-on-year in July.