The travel trends of two major airports in Kerala – Cochin International Airport and Thiruvananthapuram International Airport – in 2023 painted a contrasting picture. For the first time in recent history, domestic flyers from Thiruvananthapurm airport surpassed international passengers, with the airport roughly handling around 22 lakh domestic passengers as against 19 lakh international passengers in 2023.
As per the normal trend in Kerala, 55 out of every 100 passengers who travel through the four international airports in the State are international passengers, while in the rest of India, domestic passengers outnumber the international flyers.
The trend saw a notable shift in 2023. Of the 41.48 lakh passengers the Thiruvananthapuram airport played host to in 2023, 54% were domestic flyers and 46% were international passengers. In contrast, out of the 1 crore passengers who travelled through Cochin airport, which handles around 63.50% of the total air passengers in Kerala, 54.04 lakh were international flyers, while 46.01 lakh were domestic passengers, maintaining the ratio of 56% international flyers and 46% domestic travellers.
Pre-pandemic shift
During the pre-pandemic period, out of 100 passengers who travelled through the Thiruvananthapuram airport, 56 were international flyers and 44 were domestic passengers, compared to 65:35 in 2016-17, which reversed in 2023. Though domestic flyers outnumbered international flyers for the first time in Cochin Airport in 2018-19 and in 2019-20, the previous trend of more international flyers resumed in 2023.
Airport sources maintained that though the shift in the category of passengers flying out has become more pronounced in Thiruvananthapuram of late, a good number of the domestic passengers who fly out from here were international flyers. The relatively high air fare to West Asia from here, coupled with the emergence of the Mumbai airport as a cheap transit hub for international flyers, has given passengers from southern parts of Kerala and Tamil Nadu an option to catch a transit flight to West Asia from here. This is the main reason for the unusually high number of domestic flyers from the capital, said the sources.
With a huge overseas diaspora, the number of international flyers from Kerala used to be significantly higher than that of domestic passengers. However, the time is not too far away when the numbers of domestic flyers will surpass the international passenger volume from Kerala, given the emerging travel trend, said the sources.