India becomes world’s 5th largest aviation market with 241 million flyers in 2024; Mumbai-Delhi ranks among busiest global air routes: IATA data

India has emerged because the world’s fifth largest aviation market, dealing with 241 million passengers in 2024, whereas the Mumbai–Delhi route ranked seventh among the world’s busiest airport pairs, in line with the World Air Transport Statistics (WATS) launched by the International Air Transport Association (IATA).India’s passenger numbers grew 11.1% over 2023, when it dealt with 211 million flyers, overtaking Japan, which recorded 205 million passengers, regardless of rising sooner at 18.6%, PTI reported.“The US remains the world’s biggest aviation market with 876 million passengers in 2024 on the strength of its domestic market, growing 5.2 per cent year-on-year,” IATA mentioned. China was the second-largest, with 741 million passengers, a bounce of 18.7% over 2023.UK ranked third with 261 million flyers, adopted by Spain (241 million) and India in fifth. These figures embody each home and worldwide passengers arriving or departing from every nation.Among global airport pairs, the Mumbai–Delhi sector carried 5.9 million passengers in 2024, inserting it seventh worldwide. The Jeju–Seoul (CJU–GMP) route in South Korea topped the chart with 13.2 million passengers.“Asia Pacific dominated the ranking for the world’s busiest airport pairs,” IATA famous, including that Jeddah–Riyadh (JED–RUH) was the one non-Asia Pacific route in the highest 10.Premium journey phase outpaces economic system in some areasInternational premium class journey — enterprise and top notch — grew 11.8% globally in 2024, barely forward of economic system class progress at 11.5%. In all, 116.9 million passengers flew premium class, making up 6% of whole worldwide passengers.The Asia Pacific area led in progress with 22.8% extra premium flyers year-on-year (21 million travellers). However, economic system class journey in the area grew sooner, up 28.6% to 500.8 million passengers.In distinction, Europe, Latin America, the Middle East and North America noticed sooner progress in premium than economic system journey. Europe remained the largest market for worldwide premium journey with 39.3 million passengers, whereas premium flyers had been the very best proportionally in the Middle East at 14.7%.B737 and A320 dominate skiesIn phrases of plane utilization, Boeing’s B737 led the skies with 10 million flights and a pair of.4 trillion Available Seat Kilometres (ASKs) in 2024. The Airbus A320 adopted with 7.9 million flights and 1.7 trillion ASKs, and the Airbus A321 got here third with 3.4 million flights and 1.1 trillion ASKs.ASK is a key metric used in aviation to measure passenger-carrying capability.