India Named World's Fifth Biggest Aviation Market Of 2024: IATA

India emerged as the world's fifth biggest aviation market, handling 241 million passengers, while Mumbai-Delhi was one of the busiest airport pairs in 2024, according to data released by global airlines' grouping International Airport Transport Association.

The IATA, which represents around 350 airlines, on Monday released the latest edition of the World Air Transport Statistics for 2024.

India saw 211 million air passengers last year, a growth of 11.1% compared to 2023, ahead of Japan, which handled 205 million passengers with an annual rise of 18.6%.

"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% year-on-year. China was the second-biggest passenger market, with 741 million passengers, a growth of 18.7% compared to 2023," it said in a release.

While India stood at the fifth place, the UK at the third spot (261 million passengers) and Spain at the fourth position (241 million).

The figures include all international and domestic passengers departing or arriving in each country.

Among the top 10 airport pairs, Mumbai-Delhi was the seventh busiest, carrying 5.9 million passengers in 2024.

"Asia Pacific dominated the ranking for the world's busiest airport pairs, with Jeju-Seoul the most popular route globally, with 13.2 million passengers flying between the two airports in 2024.

In the top 10, only one airport pair -- Jeddah-Riyadh -- was not in the Asia Pacific region," IATA said.

As per the grouping, international premium class travel -- business and first class -- grew 11.8%, outpacing growth in global economy travel of 11.5%.

In 2024, the total number of international premium class travellers was 116.9 million or 6% of the total international passengers.

"Leading the regions in terms of percentage growth was Asia Pacific with a year-on-year growth of 22.8%, with 21 million premium passengers -- although it was outpaced in growth by economy class passenger numbers, up 28.6% to 500.8 million."

"Growth in premium travel exceeded economy class travel in Europe, Latin America, the Middle East and North America. Europe remained the largest market for international premium travel, with 39.3 million premium passengers, while premium travellers as a percentage of all travellers were highest in the Middle East at 14.7%," IATA said.

Last year, narrow-body planes of Boeing and Airbus were among the most used ones.

Boeing's B737 alone flew 10 million flights with 2.4 trillion Available Seat Kilometres (ASKs) in 2024.

"This was followed by the Airbus A320 with 7.9 million flights and 1.7 trillion ASKs and the Airbus A321 with 3.4 million flights and 1.1 trillion ASKs," it said.

ASK is an indicator of capacity.