India's local air traffic growth to be world's 2nd highest

India's domestic air travel market would be among the top five globally, experiencing the second highest growth rate in domestic passenger traffic after Kazakhstan but before China, IATA said today.

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Global airlines' body International Air Transport Association (IATA) released its Airline Industry Forecast 2012-2016, saying only Kazakhstan, India and China would experience double-digit growth in domestic passenger traffic during the period, recording 22.5, 13.1 and 10.1 per cent growth respectively, adding a total of 49.3 million new passengers.

"No other country is expected to experience double-digit growth rates over the forecast period," the IATA study said. By 2016, the five largest markets for domestic passengers would be the United States (710.2 million), China (415 million), Brazil (118.9 million), India (107.2 million) and Japan (93.2 million).

Globally, the IATA industry traffic forecast showed that the airlines were expected to fly some 3.6 billion passengers in 2016, which is about 800 million more than the 2.8 billion carried by them in 2011. In terms of air cargo carriage too, India would be among five fastest growing international freight markets over the 2011-2016 period.

The compound annual growth rate of the air cargo sector would be the highest for Sri Lanka at 8.7 per cent, followed by Vietnam (7.4 per cent), Brazil (6.3), India (6.0) and Egypt (5.9), the IATA said. Maintaining that aviation globally supported some 57 million jobs and USD 2.2 trillion in economic activity, IATA DG and CEO Tony Tyler said governments would have to "recognise aviation's value with policies that do not stifle innovation, tax regimes that do not punish success and investments to enable infrastructure to keep up with growth."