Air traffic up 23.5% in September; IndiGo top carrier with 40% market share

Zee Media Bureau

New Delhi: Budget carrier IndiGo remained the market leader with a share of 40 percent even as domestic airlines registered robust growth of over 23 percent in air travellers.

As per an official data released on Wednesday, the month of September saw a 23.5 percent rise in the number of air passengers to 82.3 lakh as compared to the year-ago period.

However, this total of 82.3 lakh is lower than the 83.81 lakh passengers that was flown by carriers in the month of August.

Among the carriers, IndiGo remained the leader with 40 percent market share while SpiceJet had the highest passenger load factor of 93.5 percent.

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 percent 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 percent 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 percent," DGCA said.

In terms of market share, Jet Airways was at the second position with 16.2 percent.

National carrier Air India emerged third with 14.7 percent market share, followed by SpiceJet (12.5 percent), GoAir (8.3 percent), Vistara (2.5 percent), Jet Lite (2.4 percent), AirAsia (2.3 percent) and Air Costa (0.6 percent) and TruJet (0.4 percent).

Among others, Air Carnival's market share stood at 0.1 percent while Air Pegasus did not operate any flights in September.

The overall cancellation rate of scheduled domestic airlines stood at 0.42 percent in September with Air Carnival seeing the maximum at 21.88 percent.

"Technical" reasons accounted for 48.1 percent 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.

The percentage of seats sold in the highest fare bucket in September was 2.8 percent for Jet Airways, while the airline's revenue from selling tickets in that category stood at 10.9 percent, as per DGCA data.

On Tuesday, global airlines grouping International Air Transport Association projected that India would add 322 million new fliers taking the total number of air passengers to 442 million by 2035.

Besides, IATA has forecast that India would emerge as the third largest aviation market, displacing the UK, by 2026.

With PTI Inputs