The Best and Worst Airlines for Flight Cancellations in India

“Alliance Air operates on a number of routes under UDAN (Ude Desh Ka Aam Nagrik, the government’s regional connectivity scheme) which are mostly sunrise to sunset stations with limited navigational facility and visibility issues during monsoon and pre-monsoon months,” said Ameya Joshi, aviation analyst and founder of aviation blog Network Thoughts.

Alliance Air, a subsidiary of the erstwhile Indian Airlines, was merged with Air India in 2011 but was transferred to special purpose vehicle Air India Asset Holding Pvt Ltd during the sale of Air India to the Tata group in October 2021.

In the case of SpiceJet, a number of concerns including weather-related issues, lack of planes, technical malfunction and availability of ground handling staff have caused cancellations.

SpiceJet is also the only Indian airline that will be flying fewer flights—down 0.4 percent—in the summer of 2022 compared to the summer of 2020. Last month, the DGCA also ordered the budget airline to operate only 50 percent of its flights for eight weeks in an unprecedented crackdown after an unusually high number of safety incidents involving the airline.

Vistara is a close third in terms of flight cancellations, with 0.71 percent of its flights being called off in the last six months. IndiGo has seen around 0.65 percent of its flights cancelled in the same period.

GoFirst has had the best performance in terms of flight cancellations in India, with only 0.05 percent of its flights being cancelled in the last six months. Air India has seen the second-fewest flight cancellations in that time, followed by Air Asia.

Last month, a survey by Localcircles and Moneycontrol revealed that 44 percent of fliers on domestic airlines were currently avoiding taking SpiceJet flights while 21 percent each were giving Air India and IndiGo a pass after a spate of mishaps.

However, despite a number of flights being cancelled due to technical reasons in the last few months, on average flight cancellations have been lower in 2022 over the same period in 2019, before the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.

On average, 0.68 percent flights were cancelled every month in 2022, compared to 1.13 percent flights cancelled every month in 2019.

Air India has seen the biggest improvement when it comes to flight cancellations in the last two years. From an average of 4 percent of its flights being cancelled every month in 2019, the airline has brought the number down to 0.4 percent.

Market experts attribute the improvement in Air India’s performance to the airline’s new owners and better capacity deployment.

In April, domestic airlines in India had as part of their summer schedule announced that they would operate about 4 percent more flights in the summer of 2022 compared to the schedule in 2020, which was approved before Covid hit the country.

The DGCA had approved 25,309 departures per week for this year’s summer schedule which began on the last Sunday of March and ends on the last Sunday of October.

This summer schedule, GoFirst has been allowed to operate 2,557 flights, IndiGo 11,130 flights, SpiceJet 4,192 and Air India 2,456 flights per week. Vistara had an approved flight strength of 1,741 and AirAsia India 1,601. In addition, Alliance Air had 982 flights approved, TruJet 355, Fly Big 158 and Star Air 137.