New Delhi, Oct 18 (IANS): Ongoing festive season as well as easing Covid travel restrictions accelerated India's domestic air passenger traffic growth by over 79 per cent in September on a year-on-year basis.

Pent-up demand and low base too pushed the air passenger numbers higher during the month under review.

According to the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), the country's scheduled domestic flight operations ferried 70.66 lakh passengers last month.

In September 2020, the traffic numbers stood at 39.43 lakh.

Domestic flight services had resumed on May 25, 2020 after the suspension of operations caused by the Covid-19 pandemic in end-March.

However, during the second wave of the pandemic in 2021, limited civil aviation operations were permitted.

On a sequential basis, the sector had ferried 67.01 lakh passengers in September this year.

"Passengers carried by domestic airlines during January-September 2021 were 531.11 lakh as against 440.60 lakh during the corresponding period of previous year thereby registering annual growth of 20.54 per cent and monthly growth of 79.23 per cent," the DGCA said in its September data report.

The report also said that the overall cancellation rate of scheduled domestic airlines for the month of September was at 1.17 per cent.

"During September 2021, a total of 366 passenger related complaints had been received by the scheduled domestic airlines."

"The number of complaints per 10,000 passengers carried for the month of September 2021 has been around 0.52."