India's domestic air passenger traffic down 40% to 7.7 million in Jan

|ndia's domestic air passenger traffic declined around 40 per cent to 7.7 million in January 2021 over the year-ago period as the pandemic continues to hit air travel demand, as per the monthly traffic data released by the aviation regulator, DGCA on Thursday.

The total number of passengers flown by the Indian carriers on domestic routes in January 2020 was 10.2 million.

The passenger load factor, a measure to assess how much of an airline's passenger carrying capacity has been utilised, during the previous month has shown a declining trend compared to December primarily due to the tourist season, the DGCA said.

The load factor of six major domestic airlines--IndiGo, SpiceJet, Air India, GoAir, Vistara and AirAsia India -- stood between 70 per cent and 64.9 per cent in January, as per data.

"Passengers carried by domestic airlines during January 2021 were 7.73 million against 12.7 million during the corresponding period of previous year, thereby registering annual growth of -39.60 per cent," it said.

Budget carrier IndiGo flew the most number of passengers at 4.2 million with a market share of 54.30 per cent followed by rival carrier Vistara which carried 992,000 passengers during the month, cornering 12.8 per cent share of the total domestic traffic in the month.

IndiGo also recorded the highest on-time performance during the month with on an average 93.7 per cent of its flights from four metro airports --Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru and Hyderabad --departing/arriving on time.