Amritsar, April 27, 2023 (Yes Punjab News)
The passenger footfall at Punjab’s biggest and busiest airport, Sri Guru Ram Dass Jee International Airport Amritsar continues to rise, with the airport recording 25.16 lakh passengers in financial year (FY) 2022-2023 (April 2022 to March 2023), with an overall traffic growth of 82.1% as compared to the previous FY2021-22 total of 13.82 lakh passengers.
Sharing the information, Sameep Singh Gumtala, Global Convener of the FlyAmritsar Initiative, an independent advocacy group working to promote better air connectivity to Amritsar said that the analysis of latest traffic figures released by Airport Authority of India for March 2023 revealed that Amritsar also recorded its highest ever March month traffic total of 2,58,075 passengers surpassing the previous highest of 2,35,492 passengers recorded in March 2019. This new record for March is also the second highest for any month of the year, the highest is still 2,60,174 recorded for December 2018.
According to Gumtala, the biggest contributor was the highest ever monthly domestic passenger footfall of 178,723 in March 2023, a growth of 22.4% from March 2022 with domestic aircraft movements also up by 14.9%. The international traffic also recorded a strong growth of 61.4% with 79,352 passengers in March 2023, as compared to 49,152 in March 2022 and international aircraft movements up by 38%.
The analysis also revealed that total passenger footfall of 25.16 lakhs for FY2022-23 is approx. 7,000 passengers less than the highest ever total of 25.23 lakh recorded in FY2018-19 before the start of covid-19 pandemic.
The latest traffic figures of the airport are encouraging and very promising. The January to march 2023 quarter was the busiest in Amritsar’s history, with the total traffic at 7,34,212 comprising of 507,053 domestic and 227,159 international passengers. At this growth rate, we hope the total traffic for FY2023-24 will exceed 30 lakh passengers, said Gumtala.
At present, 11 Indian and foreign airlines are operating over 400-weekly flight departures and arrivals to/from the airport, connecting it directly with 11 domestic and 10 international destinations across the globe, including London, Birmingham, Rome, Milan, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Dubai, Sharjah and Doha. The FlyAmritsar initiative is committed to make efforts to further enhance the connectivity of Amritsar in 2023 by reaching out to executives of various airlines with detailed data and statistics.
Expressing displeasure with the current and previous State government, Gumtala said despite being connected with many destinations across the globe, the airport is not connected with cities across Punjab or even the city center itself with bus service.
The government needs to focus on this cheaper mode of transport to benefit the passengers as soon as possible. Instead, the State govt. is encouraging passengers to fly from Delhi by providing this cheap mode of transport from Punjab only to Delhi airport. The footfall could have been even higher if the govt. had started bus service to the airport, added Gumtala.
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