India’s domestic air traffic to grow second-fastest globally: IATA

India's domestic air travel market would be the second-fastest growing in the world over the next four years, behind Kazakhstan but ahead of China, among the top five globally, International Air Transport Association (IATA) said today.

The global airlines body released its Airline Industry Forecast 2012-2016, which says 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, and collectively 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.

Estimating that aviation worldwide created some 57 million jobs and $2.2 trillion in economic activity, IATA director general and chief executive officer 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".