The fast growing Tiruchi airport is all set to scale a new high in the total number of passengers handled this fiscal.
Given the current robust growth in overseas travellers’ traffic, airport authorities exude confidence that the Tiruchi airport would touch the 11 lakh mark in respect of passengers (both overseas and domestic) handled at the end of the current financial year.
With overseas flights being operated from Tiruchi to Colombo, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, and Dubai every day by different airlines, international travellers clearly account for a bulk of the passenger traffic.
Tiruchi airport noticed a jump in the number of international passengers compared to the previous year.
Airports Authority of India (AAI) statistics reveal that the number of international passengers in the current fiscal at Tiruchi airport between April and December was 8.12 lakh – a rise of 26.7 per cent over 6.41 lakh passengers clocked in the previous financial year.
The airport saw an upward trend in international aircraft movements in 2014-15 as compared to the previous year. Tiruchi airport ranked second after Chennai in Tamil Nadu in terms of number of passengers and in overseas flight movements.
It was way ahead of other international airports in the country such as Goa, Mangalore, Lucknow, Bhubaneswar, Guwahati, Amritsar, Varanasi, and Jaipur in respect of volume of passengers and in international flight movements, according to AAI data.
On an average, 3,000 to 3,500 passengers were handled every day at Tiruchi airport from where overseas airlines such as Sri Lankan Airlines, Tiger Airways, Air India Express, and Malindo Air are operated daily.
A bulk of movement is to and from the West Asian countries via Colombo, say sources and added that traffic would peak if more foreign carriers were to commence operations from Tiruchi to different destinations in West Asia.
Given the current upswing, Tiruchi airport is expected to touch the 11-lakh mark in terms of passengers handled in the current fiscal and would be by far the highest once clocked, says a senior airport official.
There has been 26 p.c. increase in passenger traffic between April and December
Tiruchi is only behind Chennai in the passenger traffic in Tamil Nadu
Published - March 18, 2015 12:00 am IST
