Registering robust growth, domestic airlines carried over 23 per cent more passengers at 82.3 lakh in September compared to the year-ago period, according to official data released today.
Even though the growth rate is 23.46 per cent for September, the overall number is slightly lower than 83.81 lakh passengers flown by carriers in August.
Last month, budget carrier IndiGo remained the market leader with 40 per cent share while rival SpiceJet had the highest passenger load factor of 93.5 per cent.
Latest data from aviation regulator DGCA showed that local carriers flew 82.3 lakh people last month compared to 66.66 lakh people in September 2015.
"Another month of record growth for Indian aviation. Maintains its top rank with 23.4 per cent growth in Sep 2016," Civil Aviation Minister Ashok Gajapathi Raju said in a tweet.
The sustained domestic air passenger traffic growth of more than 20 per cent over the past year also comes against the backdrop of airlines coming out with attractive fares to garner increased market share amid stiff competition.
"Passengers carried by domestic airlines during January- September 2016 were 726.98 lakh as against 590.21 lakh during the corresponding period of previous year thereby registering a growth of 23.17 per cent," DGCA said.
In terms of market share, Jet Airways was at the second position with 16.2 per cent.
National carrier Air India emerged third with 14.7 per cent market share, followed by SpiceJet (12.5 per cent), GoAir (8.3 per cent), Vistara (2.5 per cent), Jet Lite (2.4 per cent), AirAsia (2.3 per cent) and Air Costa (0.6 per cent) and TruJet (0.4 per cent).
Among others, Air Carnival's market share stood at 0.1 per cent while Air Pegasus did not operate any flights in September.
The overall cancellation rate of scheduled domestic airlines stood at 0.42 per cent in September with Air Carnival seeing the maximum at 21.88 per cent.
"Technical" reasons accounted for 48.1 per cent of the total cancellations last month.
"During September 2016, a total of 728 passenger related complaints had been received by the scheduled domestic airlines. The number of complaints per 10,000 passengers carried for the month of September 2016 has been 0.9," the regulator said.
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