Akasa Air filled 53% seats in August, accounting for 0.2% market share

Top-6 carriers posted much higher seat occupancy; experts say not much can be read into Akasa's load factor as airline is at a very nascent stage

Akasa Air, which operated its first commercial flight on August 7, filled 52.9 per cent seats up to August 31, according to aviation regulator Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) on Friday.

In comparison, AirAsia India, Air India, Go First, IndiGo, SpiceJet and Vistara filled anywhere between 73.6 per cent and 84.6 per cent seats on their flights in August, showed data released by the DGCA (see table).

However, experts and industry executives said that not much can be read into Akasa Air’s load factor as the airline is at a very nascent stage. The airline did not respond to Business Standard’s queries regarding the matter.

The airline currently has four aircraft in its fleet and operates in five cities across the country. It will add Delhi to its network on October 7, when it plans to start operating flights on Delhi-Bengaluru and Delhi-Ahmedabad route.

The DGCA data showed that Akasa Air carried 24,000 passengers on its flights in August, which gave it 0.2 per cent market share. IndiGo is the market leader as it flew 5.83 million passengers domestically, recording a market share of 57.7 per cent.

Ameya Joshi, aviation analyst and founder of aviation blog ‘Network Thoughts’, said that “good or bad load factor” should not be given much importance during the first few months of an airline’s operation.

“As the network expands, more sales channels open up and the load factor starts going up. Vistara had a 45 per cent load factor in its first month while AirAsia India had 80 per cent. Both airlines have not been profitable yet,” Joshi added.

AirAsia India — which started its flight operations on June 12, 2014 — currently has 28 aircraft in its fleet. Vistara — which operated its first flight on January 9, 2015 —has 54 aircraft.

AirAsia India and Vistara flew 588,000 and 981,000 passengers respectively, on its domestic flights in August, according to DGCA data.

Akasa Air has said that its fleet size will go up to 18 aircraft by March 2023. By March 2027, the airline plans to have 72 aircraft in its fleet.

DGCA data said that 10.1 million people flew on domestic flights across India in August this year, 51 per cent more than the corresponding month last year.

SpiceJet and Go First recorded 7.9 per cent and 8.6 per cent domestic market shares in August, the data showed. 

Air India’s domestic market share was 8.5 per cent in August.

The carrier — which was handed over to the Tata Group on January 27 — had on Thursday said it plans to increase its domestic market share to 30 per cent in five years.

At four major airports — Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Bengaluru — AirAsia India recorded the highest on-time performance at 93.3 per cent. Vistara and Air India’s figures were 91.4 per cent and 87.9 per cent, respectively, at these four airports.

Seats filled by airlines on domestic flights in August

Name of Airline	Domestic load factor (in percentage)
SpiceJet	84.6
Vistara	84.4
Go First	81.6
IndiGo	78.3
AirAsia India	74.9
Air India	73.6
Akasa Air	52.9
Source: DGCA