 "Air traffic grows 2.3% in Nov")
Domestic air passenger traffic grew moderately with the country’s six scheduled airlines together carrying 5.14 million passengers in November. This is an increase of around two% over the 5.02 million passengers who had availed of air travel services during the same period last year.
Data available with the Directorate General of Civil Aviation show even though overall capacity in the domestic market went up by 10.5% last month, demand increased at a much slower pace at 2.5%.
Interestingly, state-owned Air India overtook SpiceJet to become the second largest passenger airline in the domestic market with share of 19.3% in air traffic during the month. Budget carrier IndiGo continued to maintain a strong lead in the domestic market with nearly one out of every three travelers preferring to fly with the airline. Indigo recorded market share of 28.6% during the month, significantly higher than Jet Airways (which along with low-cost arm JetLite) accounted for 24.1% (Jet Airways 18.5% and JetLite 5.6%)% of the domestic air travel market.
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Air India also recorded the highest passenger load factor (PLF) during the month at 75.1%. The national carrier was followed by IndiGo whose PLF stood at 74.6%. PLF is a measure of how much of an airline's passenger carrying capacity or number of seats is being used.
GoAir followed with PLF of 73.2%. For Jet Airways and JetLite average PLF was 71.75%. SpiceJet finished last with 70.7% load factor.
IndiGo maintained its reputation for record on-time performance – 86.5 percent of its flights were on time from the country’s six biggest airports. Jet Airways and JetLite recorded OTP of 85.9%. Air India’s record in on-time performance was the worst among all airlines at 71.7%.
Total passengers carried by domestic airlines between January and November this year stood at 55.84 million as compared to 53.43 million in the same period last year, registering a growth of 4.5%.