Despite the downturn in the international aviation industry, passenger traffic to and from India registered a 5.1 per cent growth in 2002 compared to 2001.

Official estimates show that Air-India, Indian Airlines and the foreign airlines operating in the country have ferried 12.6 million passengers in the last calendar year, compared to 12 million in 2001.

The growth has been largely propelled by the two state-owned carriers, IA and A-I, which have out-performed the market growth rate.

While IA has witnessed an impressive 11.5 per cent growth in international passenger traffic, A-I has registered a 6.8 per cent growth in traffic over 2001.

On the other hand, foreign airlines operating out of India have seen a meagre growth rate of only 3.6 per cent.

The uptrend in the growth rate for international passenger traffic through India comes after a dismal 0.2 per cent growth rate in 2001 over 2000, primarily due to the effect of September 11.

The traffic had registered an impressive rise of 5.6 per cent in 2000 compared to 1999. A 5.1 per cent rate of growth in 2002 seems to indicate that the industry is on a recovery path, that is if the Iraq crisis and the mystery flu do not put it off track.

While A-I and IA have had faster growth rates, they are still way behind the total traffic catered to by the foreign airlines. The latter account for more than two third or 69.9 per cent of the total inbound and outbound passengers.

The share of A-I in the total international passenger traffic accounts was 18.7 per cent, while IA accounted for 11.3 per cent of the market in 2002.

For the last calendar year, A-I carried a total of 2.3 million passengers as compared to 2.2 million in the previous year. IA flew 1.4 million passengers in 2002 as compared to 1.2 million in 2001, while foreign airlines ferried 8.8 million passengers in 2002 in comparison to 8.5 million the previous year.