Air Mobility of the Population of India: Regional Differences

The rapid expansion of the airline and airport network in recent decades has led to a significant increase in the air mobility of people, including in India. The purpose of the article is to identify regional differences in the general level of air mobility of its population. The air mobility rate of the total population of India has increased from 0.12 (2010–2011) to 0.25 trips per 1 inhabitant (2018–2019), but it is still low, and the country is still far behind most others, being at the level of Africa. Using statistical information on the passenger turnover of airports and the population of 36 states and union territories, the values of the level of air mobility of their population were calculated, i.e. the number of round trips by aircraft per inhabitant of each region during the year. There are large regional differences in this level: it is higher on the islands, in small states and union territories with large airports; the average level is typical for economically more developed regions, the low level is for economically more backward and peripheral ones, as well as in areas with a developed network of railways. During the 2010s, it increased significantly in the economically backward states and union territories in comparison with the more developed ones, but not so much in the regions of high and medium levels of economic activity for their population, as well as in the mountains, and even less in the most economically developed states. Due to the COVID-2019 epidemic, the level of air mobility decreased by 3 times (from 0.25 in 2019–2020 to 0.08 trips per 1 inhabitant in 2020–2021). The largest decline in air mobility in the first year of the pandemic was observed in states with large airports, which had a large share of international passenger traffic before the pandemic (they declined the most), as well as in remote island union territories.