NEW DELHI: The growth in India’s domestic air travel is among the key benchmarks the sellers of global commercial jets would keenly track.But, curiously, some airports in the peninsula cater to more international than domestic passengers, illustrating the traffic potential from the Gulf and the ASEAN cities in the South.Data from the state-run aviation property company Airports Authority of India (AAI) show that Kochi, Trivandrum , Kozhikode, and Tiruchirappalli hosted more outbound passengers than those travelling within the country in the fiscal year ended March 31, 2017.“These international airports have more international flights. Look at the case of Tiruchirappalli airport, which is connected by five international destinations directly, but only one domestic destination,” said Habeebullah Ubaidullah, a Trichy-based aviation analyst.This airport, with flights to Colombo and connected domestically to Chennai by ATR aircraft, has 14 narrow-bodied international departures per day with 15,078 weekly seat capacities and more than 90% of load factor. There are only three ATR local departures to Chennai.“Tiruchirappalli International Airport has clearly been neglected by Indian carriers and South East Asian airlines have benefited from that,” adds Ubaidullah.This trend is in sharp contrast to the passenger break-up at the nation’s two biggest cities and aviation hubs — Delhi and Mumbai — where domestic passengers outnumber those going overseas three to one.Delhi airport catered to 42 million domestic and 15 million international passengers in FY17: For Mumbai, home to Bollywood and India’s top bankers, the figures were 32 million and 12 million, respectively.Last fiscal, Indian airports catered to about 100 million domestic passengers and 59 million international passengers.