Domestic air traffic down 11% in Jan-May period

The financial slowdown hit passenger traffic in India with the number of air travellers dropping by almost 11 per cent between January and May compared with that in the same period last year.     

Even though a marginal increase was witnessed in passenger traffic last month, official figures released today showed that the passengers carried by all airlines in the first five months of 2009 fell to 173.34 lakh against 194.11 lakh in the same period last year, thus registering a negative growth of 10.7 per cent.     

Total passengers carried last month, however, went up to 39.29 lakh from 33.15 lakh in April this year, the statistics showed.     

Kingfisher Airlines and its no-frill arm Kingfisher Red led the way flying 10.1 lakh passengers, followed by Jet Airways and JetLite, which together carried 9.12 lakh passengers. While Air India (Domestic) flew 6.9 lakh, all-business class carrier Paramount Airways carried 82,000.     

Among the no-frill airlines, IndiGo took 5.4 lakh air travellers, followed by SpiceJet with 4.96 lakh and GoAir 1.88 lakh.     

The market share of all the scheduled domestic airlines either remained around the same or changed marginally compared to the April figures, the statistics showed.