Almost 100 mn Indians flew in 2016, domestic air passenger traffic up 23%

Air passengers in 2016 were 99.89 mn as against 81.09 mn during previous year

India's domestic air passenger traffic zoomed by 23.18 per cent in 2016 to 99.89 million, official data showed on Tuesday.

"Passengers carried by domestic airlines in 2016 were 99.89 million as against 81.091 million during the previous year, registering a growth of 23.18 per cent," the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) said in its statistical analysis.

According to the data furnished by DGCA, domestic air passenger traffic increased by 23.91 per cent during December to 9.55 million from 7.71 million during the corresponding month last year.

In November 2016, the passenger traffic rose by 22.45 per cent to 8.97 million.

The data showed that low-cost carrier (LCC) SpiceJet had the highest passenger load factor (PLF) during the month under review at 93.7 per cent.

"Not only have we scored a hat-trick with the best OTP (on-time performance) for the third consecutive month in a row, we have also recorded over 90 per cent passenger load factor for 21 successive months," G.P. Gupta, Chief Administrative Officer, SpiceJet, said in a statement.

SpiceJet was followed by budget passenger carriers IndiGo (91.4) and GoAir (90.7).

Furthermore, the data showed that SpiceJet led the industry with 70 per cent punctuality rate at four major airports of Bengaluru, Delhi, Hyderabad and Mumbai.

It was followed by Jet Airways and JetLite (64.3), Vistara (64.2), GoAir (63.6), IndiGo (61.6) and Air India (59) being on schedule.

Meanwhile, Air Costa had the highest number of cancellations at 13.65 per cent, followed by Air Carnival (12.03), Trujet (5.01), IndiGo (2.83), Air India (1.91), Jet Airways (1.77), SpiceJet (1.66), JetLite (1.40), GoAir (0.79), Vistara (0.40) and AirAsia India (0.11).

"The overall cancellation rate of scheduled domestic airlines for December 2016 has been 2.18 per cent," the aviation regulator said.

The data disclosed that a total of 907 passenger related complaints was received in December.

In terms of market share, IndiGo led the industry with the highest market share of 41.6 per cent followed by Jet Airways (15), Air India (13.3), SpiceJet (12.8) and GoAir (8.00).

Vistara reported a market share of 2.9 per cent, followed by AirAsia India (2.8), JetLite (2.5), Air Costa (0.6), Trujet (0.4) and Air Carnival (0.1).