Delhi-Mumbai among top 10 air routes this week

NEWDELHI: The air services route between Delhi and Mumbai was among top 10 ‘most-traveled’ routes in the world this week, as per a ranking list released by the Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation (CAPA) on Friday.Further, all the most traversed routes in top 10 category fell in the Asia Pacific region as per this analysis hinting at the growth in the aviation sector in the territory.A total of 140,956 seats were sold on the flights from the Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport to Mumbai making this the 8th most popular route next to seven other routes - most of them in Japan and Australia in this week. The CAPA report further highlighted how the number of seats on offer between the regions had increased 300 times over. As per the statistics recorded by OAG Aviation (a comprehensive airline information, analytical and forecasting service), the weekly frequencies between Mumbai-Delhi were 124 in 1995 and increased to 475 in 2011. “The combination of less regulation, more competition and increased affluence have all combined to create some stunning percentage increases is less than two decades,” the report said. Delhi-Bengaluru came in the 38th place on this world ranking with over 68,000 seats.Ironically, though the US has the most airports in the global top 30, none of the airports in that region are in the busiest routes list until position 18 taken by the Los Angeles-San Francisco route after which the next popular US route comes on number 27 only. But for the singular mention of Heathrow in position 32, there is not a single European airport until number 50(Madrid-Barcelona). Also, of the top 50, 41 are domestic routes with only New-York- London among the long haul routes at rank 32.“Interestingly, even a short distance of 237 miles between the Dubai-Doha is among the top 50. It is highly unlikely that 1 million Qataris and 1.8 million residents of Dubai are demanding that kind of schedule intensity,” the report read.