Air passenger traffic soars in Oct.

The country’s air passenger traffic inched up last month on the back of upbeat demand for international flights for holiday getaways, the government said Tuesday.

The number of passengers on international routes shot up 6.4 percent in October compared with a year ago to 3.83 million. That set a fresh high for the month, according to the Ministry of Land, Transport and Maritime Affairs. All-time monthly high was recorded last August with 4.23 million.

Domestic air passenger traffic also surged 5.5 percent year-on-year to 2.03 million that month, the ministry said.

Air cargo handling fell 3.5 percent during the same period to 306,000 tons chiefly due to high fuel costs and an ongoing economic slump in the United States and Europe.

“Buoyant demand for air passenger traffic resulted from a spike in overseas trips to Southeast Asia, Europe and Oceania during Korean and Chinese national holidays,” the ministry said in a statement.

The ministry noted that the number of travelers to and from Australia or New Zealand rose by a whopping 24.8 percent to more than 128,000. The figure for Southeast Asian nations and Europe went up 16 percent and 9.8 percent on-year each.

Passenger numbers to and from China increased 4.5 percent to top 902,000, but those to and from Japan and the United States dropped 1.8 percent and 2.1 percent.

Ministry data showed that Korea’s five low-cost carriers took a bigger bite out of large national flag airlines. In October, their share of domestic flights up 7 percentage points to 42.2 percent from a year earlier.

Combined share of the budget airlines in the market ― Jeju Air, Air Busan, Jin Air, Eastar Jet and T’way Air ― nearly doubled to 4.7 percent in a year. They carried 2.03 million passengers, up 5.5 percent for the same period.

By Shin Hyon-hee (heeshin@heraldcorp.com)