Footfall increases at airport with over 11k passengers using domestic services

On Thursday, 6,241 passengers arrived at the airport while 5,026 departed from here, taking the total number of passengers to 11,267. The airport recorded 45 arrivals and equal number of departures on the day, said the Airports Authority of India.

According to sources, most of the passengers who arrived here were from Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Kolkata, Guwahati, Lucknow, Varanasi, Bhubaneswar, and Port Blair. Most of them are employees of construction firms, who were brought here by private firms ostensibly to restart the stalled projects. Also, flight services to Varanasi, Lucknow, Kannur started to operate from Thursday. After the government announced relaxation of lockdown restrictions, number of passengers using domestic flights has been on the rise each passing day. Last week, 76 domestic flights were operated from Chennai and the footfall was nearly 6,000 on an average. After further relaxation, the footfall increased further, with the number of service going up to 90.

Before the lockdown in March, the daily footfall in the domestic airport was more than 30,000.

According to AAI, other airport in south India, too, recorded an increase in patronage. The airports in the southern region – excluding Chennai – cumulatively recorded 79 arrivals and a similar number of departures, ferrying a total of 11,511 passengers on Thursday.