19.6 per cent air traffic growth witnesses says Suresh Prabhu

New Delhi, July 4: India witnessed a 19.6 per cent growth in air passenger traffic in June, Civil Aviation minister Suresh Prabhu said.

The minister, who was in Uttar Pradesh to flag off a SpiceJet flight from Kanpur to Delhi under the UDAN scheme, said the growth achieved was in line with the government's thinking of the entire country benefitting from the aviation sector.

"Under #leadership of @PMOIndia @narendramodi ji #Aviation sector is doing rapid progress.We are fastest growing aviation market in world. Another record month of huge advancement, provisional air traffic growth for June is 19.6% which is in line with our thinking, let all benefit," the minister tweeted.

The tweet, however, did not mention about the aviation body which prepared the traffic data.

The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), in its latest traffic data for May, had said that domestic air passenger traffic grew 16.53 per cent to 11.86 million during the month over the same period a year ago.

Twelve domestic airlines together flew 11.85 million passengers as compared to 10.17 million passengers in May last year, the DGCA said.