While aviation was one of the most affected sectors because of the COVID-19, a detailed analysis of the city-pair traffic data from the DGCA indicates that many routes connecting Mumbai have witnessed a significant drop in passenger traffic. The same has not been the case with routes connecting Delhi. Factly had earlier analysed the trends in domestic air passenger traffic pre- and post-pandemic. Data revealed that there has been an improvement in numbers in 2021 and 2022 following the pandemic, compared to 2020. However, the Domestic Air Passenger traffic is still significantly lower than in 2019. India’s aviation sector had handled more than 10 crore passengers each year prior to the pandemic which has now dropped to 6.3 crores in 2020, and 8.38 crores in 2021, indicating a slow recovery. In this story, we look at the trend in domestic passenger traffic across the top-50 routes with the most domestic passenger traffic between 2016 and 2021 using the Director-General of Civil Aviation (DGCA)’s monthly domestic city pair-wise data. That is, it provides data on the number of passengers commuting to and from a pair of cities, say city 1 and city 2. For the analysis in this story, the total number of passengers commuting between city 1 and city 2 in a specific calendar year has been calculated by adding the total number of passengers commuting to and from the two cities through the 12 months of that year. Share of top-10, top-20, and top-50 routes to the total air domestic passenger traffic has declined over the years The share of top-10, top-20, and top-50 routes to the total air domestic passenger traffic has declined over the years. A possible reason for this could be the increase in the number of routes being operated. As per the DGCA’s domestic city pair-wise data, the number of routes has gone up from 314 as of 2015 to 567 in 2021 (as of December of the respective years), an increase of 80%. The share of the top 10 routes has dropped by 9.2 percentage points in six years from 30.3% in 2016 to 21.2% in 2021. There has been a marginal improvement in the share of the top ten routes in 2021 as compared to 2020. Contributing to nearly 46% in 2016, the share of passenger traffic in the top-20 routes has dropped by over 12.7 percentage points to 33.1% in 2021. During this period, the share of the top-50 routes has dropped by 14.35 percentage points. The share of these routes was more than two-thirds of the total domestic air passenger traffic in 2016 which has dropped to 55% in 2021. Passenger traffic from Major cities was used for the analysis Among the top-50 routes for each year between 2016 and 2021, the percentage share of the domestic air passenger traffic along those routes connecting at least one of the major cities- Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Kolkata, and Chennai has been calculated. The passenger traffic, say, between Delhi and Mumbai has been counted under both Delhi and Mumbai’s share of the total traffic of the top-50 routes. In other words, the share of traffic from or to these cities is those passengers who have either boarded or alighted in that particular city. For instance, to calculate the passenger traffic contributed by Delhi in the top-50 routes, we have taken into consideration the traffic across all those routes connecting Delhi and another city in the top-50 of each year. In each of 2016, 2017, and 2020, there were 22 routes that connected Delhi and another city in the top-50 while in 2018 and 2019, there were 21 such routes. In 2022, 23 routes connected Delhi in the top-50. Share of passenger traffic connecting Delhi contributes to more than half the traffic in top-50 routes The share of passenger traffic connecting across routes connecting Delhi to the total passenger traffic in the top-50 routes has always been above 50%. Unlike the trend across other major cities like Mumbai and Bengaluru, the share of traffic contributed by routes connecting Delhi has been on a rise- from 51.1% in 2018 to almost 57% in 2021. Though the contribution of top-50 routes is on a decline, the share of passenger traffic in routes connecting Delhi is increasing, implying that routes connecting Delhi are the most used. At the same time, the share of passenger traffic across routes connecting Mumbai in the top-50 routes has been on a gradual decline. The share was more than 38% in 2016 which has come down to about 25.5% in 2021. In each of the last six years, there were 11 to 12 routes connecting Mumbai in the top-50 list. Meanwhile, share in the top-50 routes of both Bengaluru and Kolkata increased between 2016 and 2020 and dropped in 2021 while Hyderabad overtook Chennai in terms of percentage contribution to domestic air passenger traffic in the top-50 routes.