The financial downslide took its toll on the Indian aviation sector with the passenger traffic recording a negative growth rate of about 8 per cent in the first half of this year.
Passengers carried by domestic airlines between January and June came down to about 21.1 million from 22.9 million in the same period last year, thereby registering negative growth of approximately 8 per cent, official traffic data released today said.
However, the total domestic passengers carried by the scheduled carriers in the second quarter of 2009 (April to June) was 10.94 million as against 9.82 million between January and March.
In the second quarter of this year, Kingfisher Airlines and its low-cost subsidiary Kingfisher Red topped the list of Indian carriers by flying 2.77 million passengers. It was followed by Jet Airways and its subsidiary JetLite, together carrying 2.59 million, and Air India (Domestic) with 1.92 million.
Among the no-frill carriers, IndiGo flew 1.5 million air travellers, followed by SpiceJet (1.36 million) and GoAir (534,000), while full-business class carrier Paramount carried 230,000 air travellers, the data showed.
The percentage market share of the carriers between January and June showed that Air India (Domestic) cornered 17.5 per cent, Jet Airways 16.3 per cent, Jet Lite 7.4 per cent, Kingfisher Airlines (including Kingfisher Red) 25.3, SpiceJet 12.4, Paramount 2.1, GoAir 4.9 and IndiGo 13.7.
Kingfisher and its low-cost subsidiary bagged the highest percentage share in the first six months of this year, removing Jet Airways from the top position. Jet and JetLite together had last year (January-June) cornered 29.3 per cent of the market share.
Both no-frill carriers IndiGo and SpiceJet had a lower percentage share in the first half of last year, which improved during the same period this year.
Figures relating to cancellation of flights saw Paramount Airways topping the list with the highest cancellation of 16 per cent, followed by Jet Airways with 4.1 per cent and MDLR Airlines with 2.6 per cent.
The cancellation rate of Paramount Airways was on the higher side and well above the industry average, an official spokesperson said. Of its 16 per cent cancellations, about 15 per cent was due to technical reasons and the remaining commercial.
The best performance on punctuality was by IndiGo at 87 per cent, Jet Airways 86.4 per cent, GoAir 83.4 per cent, Kingfisher 83 per cent and Air India (Domestic) and Alliance Air jointly 75.7 per cent, the data showed.
