Air passenger traffic in India hikes by 4% in August

 

New Delhi: Indian airlines carried 1.01 crore passengers in August, reflecting a more than 4% growth in domestic air traffic compared to the previous month. The carriers flew 97.05 lakh passengers in July.

‘Passengers carried by domestic airlines during January-August 2022 were 770.70 lakh as against 460.45 lakh during the corresponding period of previous year thereby registering annual growth of 67.38% and monthly growth of 50.96%’, DGCA said on Friday. In August, IndiGo remained the country’s largest airline with a market share of 57.7%, followed by Vistara with a share of 9.7%, which was lower than 10.4% registered in July, as per DGCA data.

IndiGo’s market share declined from 58.8% in July. The country’s new airline Akasa, which started operations on August 7, garnered a 0.2% market share. Last month, Air Asia was on top in terms of On-Time Performance (OTP) while SpiceJet had the highest passenger load factor. After being severely hit by the coronavirus pandemic, the country’s civil aviation sector is on the recovery path.

The data from the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) showed that Go First’s market share rose to 8.6% in August from 8.2% in July. During the same period, the share of Air India marginally increased to 8.5% from 8.4%. SpiceJet saw its market share dip to 7.9% in August from 8% in July, and during the same period, the share of Air Asia jumped to 5.8% from 4.6%.

As per the data, the market share of Alliance Air remained flat at 1.2% in August. In terms of OTP, Air Asia was on top at 93.3% followed by Vistara (91.4%), Air India (87.9%) and IndiGo (85.5%). The OTP of SpiceJet was 79.1%, Go First 74.9% and Alliance Air 72.1%. OTP for scheduled domestic airlines is computed for four metro airports — Bangalore, Delhi, Hyderabad and Mumbai. SpiceJet had the highest passenger load factor at 84.6% in August while that of Vistara and IndiGo stood at 84.4% and 78.3%, respectively. The passenger load factor, an indicator of seat occupancy, was 81.6% for Go First, 73.6% for Air India, 74.9% for Air Asia and 65.5% for Alliance Air.