Kochi: The Cochin International Airport on Wednesday crossed the 10 million mark in passenger traffic in a financial year for the first time this year on the back of a sharp rise in domestic passenger volume.
The milestone was crossed when the Indigo flight 6E 563 from Chennai docked at its terminal -2 at 12.20 pm in the day. Cochin airport is the seventh airport in the country to cross the 10 million mark.
The airport company, which handled 8.94 million passengers last fiscal, has registered a 22 per cent growth in domestic traffic, taking total passenger number to 4 .84 million as against 3.94 million last year. The international sector rose by four percent to 5.16 million passengers as against 4.98 million last fiscal. The total aircraft movement has also increased by 13 per cent from 62,827 to 68,898.
CIAL currently stands fourth in India in terms of international traffic while in terms of total traffic, the airport company stands in seventh position.
V.J.Kurian, managing director, CIAL, attributed the feat to the spurt in domestic traffic, which overtook international traffic. The country is witnessing an extraordinary growth in domestic aviation sector. Last year it registered 100 million passengers and became the third largest in the world in terms of domestic passengers. “The sector is growing so fast that the airport operators have to double their capacity every four years. To ride the wave, CIAL is renovating the existing terminal-1 for domestic operations, which will become operational in May 2018’’, Mr Kurian said.
On completion, the terminal will have a built up area of 6 lakh square feet including seven aero bridges. The new facility will have 56 check- in counters. A total of 146 flights are from the airport in the domestic sector weekly and plans are afoot to commence services connecting Kochi directly to cities including Kolkota, Lucknow and Surat.
