Domestic air traffic hits record single-day high of 4.84 lakh passengers on Oct 14

DGCA, domestic air traffic, Air passengers, air traffic, domestic passenger growth, aviation data

Domestic air traffic flew to a record single-day high of 4,84,263 passengers on October 14, rising over 2.6 percent from the previous peak of 4,71,751 hit on April 22. The massive traffic on the first work day after Navratri, Dussehra and Durga Pooja celebrations was borne by 6,435 flights, according to data from the civil aviation ministry.

With the domestic air passenger traffic booming in India and competition among the airlines on the boil, IndiGo and Air India, the two largest airlines, have reported a rise in their market shares in September by 60 basis points (bps) and 40 bps from the August tally. SpiceJet and Akasa Air have consequently lost 30 bps and 10 bps in their shares of the pie. One basis point is one-hundredth of a percentage point.

The country's domestic air traffic rose 6.4 percent in September over the last year to 1.30 crore passengers, data released by the directorate general of civil aviation (DGCA) showed on October 15.

Domestic air traffic fell for four months to September, when compared with the May 2024 reading, which stood at 1.38 crore. Some 1.31 crore passengers had taken to the skies in August, 1.32 crore in June and 1.29 crore in July.

Air India Express was the most punctual airline operating in India, overtaking Akasa Air in September, the DGCA data showed. IndiGo came second, followed by Vistara and Air India. Akasa Air topped in punctuality for four months till June after overtaking AIX Connect in March, but fell to the fifth spot in September.

The aviation pie

The market share of India's largest airline, IndiGo, kept growing from July after falling 80 basis points in June. It had lost 160 bps in January market share, but since then it has been on the rise. The airline's market share now stands at 63 percent, with the low-cost carrier flying 82.12 lakh passengers in September.

Air India remained the second-largest domestic carrier in September and garnered a market share of 15 percent, flying 19.69 lakh passengers during the month.

Vistara's market share in September came in at 10 percent, with 13.08 lakh passengers. The airline had on April 7 said that it was reducing capacity by 10 percent, which is around 25-30 flights daily, as the carrier strove to stabilise operations.

The market share of AIX Connect which, too, is part of the Tata stable, fell 30 bps to 4.1 percent, as the carrier served 5.35 lakh passengers in September.

SpiceJet's market share in September stood at 2 percent after a 30-bps loss from August and 110 bps from July. September marks the sixth straight month of slump in market share for SpiceJet after it kept sliding from April to August. The airline carried 261,000 passengers in September when its market share fell from a peak of 10.7 percent scaled in February 2022.

Akasa Air carried 5.73 lakh passengers in September cornering 4.1 percent of the market, which was 30 bps lower than the August slice.

The passenger load factor, or the occupancy rate, of SpiceJet, Vistara, IndiGo, Air India, and AIX Connect stood at 80.4 percent, 90.9 percent, 82.6 percent, 80.1 percent, and 81.6 percent, respectively, in September.

Akasa Air’s passenger load factor came in at 85.9 percent in September up from 85.5 in August but down from 86.4 percent in July, 89.6 percent in June, 90.3 percent in May, 87.9 percent in April, 88.4 percent in March and 92.4 percent in February. The airline completed two full year of operations on August 7, 2024.

On-Time Performance

AIX Connect turned in an on-time performance of 70.1 percent at the four metro airports – New Delhi, Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Mumbai. IndiGo and Vistara were second and third, followed by Air India.

On-time performance of airlines had fallen in July and remain unchanged in August due to adverse weather conditions and monsoon impacting operations of flights across India.

On-time performance had risen in March 2024 after heavy fog forced flight delays throughout December, January and February, but dipped again in April due to protests across the Tata Group carriers, and remained low in May, June and July due to adverse weather conditions.

Akasa Air reported a 5 percent rise in punctuality in April, however, all other airlines saw a fall in their punctuality when compared to March 2024.

Air traffic was also higher than pre-Covid levels. In June 2019, domestic airlines flew only 119.05 lakh passengers.

Cancellation factor

The overall cancellation rate of scheduled domestic airlines for September 2024 stood at 0.85 percent, around 3 basis points higher than the 0.83 in August, 1.9 percent in July, 1.43 percent in June, 1.7 percent in May and 0.80 percent in April 2024.

Flybig Air, a regional airline, recorded the highest cancellation rate of 17.97 percent, Alliance Air was second with a cancellation rate of 4.74 percent.

SpiceJet had the third-highest cancellation rate at 4.12 percent and Indiaone Air was fourth at 1.65 percent.

FLY91 at 1.58 percent, IndiGo at 0.62 percent, Akasa Air at 1.11 percent, AIX Connect at 0.27 percent, Air India at 0.13 percent and Vistara at 0.88 percent saw their cancellation rates fall in September.

Technical reasons was the biggest basis behind cancellations or termination of flights with a share at 41.6 percent followed by miscellaneous, weather condition, operational, and commercial at 27.9 percent, 17.8 percent, 11.9 percent and 0.8 percent, respectively.

Complaints

During September 2024, a total of 765 passenger-related complaints were received by scheduled domestic airlines. The number of complaints per 10,000 passengers carried for September has been around 0.59.

The major reasons for complaints are flight problem-related. Airlines have received a total 765 complaints of which 765 have been addressed.

Delays and compensations

According to the DGCA data, a total of 756 passengers were denied boarding in September and an amount of Rs 75.08 lakhs was spent by the airlines as compensation and facilities.

In the cancellations category, 48,222 passengers were impacted and Rs 88.14 lakh was spent by the carriers as compensation and facilities in September.

Around 2,16,484 passengers were impacted by flight delays in September 2024 and received compensation of Rs 2.41 crore.