Domestic air traffic made a minor recovery in July, growing to 21.07 lakh passengers, a 6.1 percent increase from June, when 19.84 lakh fliers took to the air.
The improvement, even though small, will bring solace to the industry that continues to struggle because of the COVID-19 disruption.
Year-on-year, however, the traffic declined 82.3 percent in July. In July 2019, 1.19 crore passengers travelled by air.
But here also there is a silver lining. The drop is lower than what was seen in June when the decline was 83.5 percent, year-on-year.
For the year till July, the industry had a total of 3.72 crore passengers, a drop of 54.84 percent, from the same seven months a year ago.
The data was released by industry regulator DGCA, on August 13.
In terms of passenger loads, SpiceJet continued to do better than its peers with an occupancy rate of 70 percent in July. IndiGo had a load of 60.2 percent, GoAir had 50.5 percent and AirAsia India had a passenger load of 53.1 percent.
In fact, SpiceJet was the only domestic carrier to improve upon its passenger loads in July, from a month earlier.
All the airlines have been forced to cut expenditure, with IndiGo announcing plans to lay off 10 percent of its employees. Similarly, SpiceJet and GoAir have also cut salaries and sent a substantial percentage of their employees on leave without pay.
Market share
IndiGo's market share though has jumped the most, in the second quarter of the calendar year. The country's largest airline increased its market share to 52.5 percent in the three months, ending June 30, up from 48.1 percent in March.
The increase mostly came at the cost of GoAir. The market share of the Wadia family-owned airline dropped to 3.9 percent, from 9.9 percent. SpiceJet's market share grew marginally to 16.9 percent, from 16 percent.
Market shares of AirAsia India and Vistara also fell.
Interestingly, in July, IndiGo's share went up to 60.4 percent, probably the highest ever.
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