Rise in the number of domestic travelers at TIA
January 6, 2017- Kathmandu
There has been massive growth recently in number of domestic travelers at the domestic port at Tribhuvan International Airport (TIA) which had been facing flak in terms of number of passengers traveling through domestic carriers for four years at a consecutive rate.
But, at the first nine months of 2016, the internal passengers of the country choose travel by air rather by the road which could be accounted by the massive increment in the passenger traffic.
The jolting highways of the country and recent earthquake that brought fear among travelers compelled them to opt for air travel. According to Tribhuvan International Airport (TIA), domestic airline passenger movement hopped 21.15 percent to 1.19 million throughout the January-September period. Domestic transporters established 209,127 extra travelers in the first nine months of 2016 compared to the same months previous year.
The reason behind such growth could also be the affordability for the air travel by passengers and domestic travel movement has grown up to six to seven percent which is a boon for the airlines operators as the business has grown tremendously. The upcoming year 2017 also seems to be good as many of the domestic airlines are expanding their fleet which will affect the ticket prices and can likely go down.
Buddha Air soared 720,503 travelers in the first nine months of 2016, imposing 60 percent of the passenger market share while Yeti Airlines flew 274,955 passengers, Saurya Airlines 62,369, Tara Air 39,269 and Nepal Airlines carried 28,716 passengers.
The passenger movement had been blocked since 2008 due to high airfares, road blockades and increasing NGOs and INGOs personnel movement after the peace process and a huge hike in real states. Later, there was a slight increase of 13 percent in 2008, massive jump of 33 percent in 2009, 12.83 percent increase in 2010 but a drop in 2011 to negative growth in 2012.
