Domestic air traffic grows 25% in July

Domestic air traffic rose 25.8% in July on a year-on-year basis as low fares continue to spur travel demand.

While air traffic has been growing at 20% plus for several months in a row, this is second time in 2016 when the air traffic grew by 25%. In March, the traffic rose 25.25%.

Last month domestic airlines flew 8.5 million passengers as against 6.7 million passengers in July 2015.

IndiGo continues to lead all the airlines and the Guragon-based airline has now inched closer to 40% market share. IndiGo's market share rose to 39.8% in July from 37.9% in June as it improved its load factors and added aircraft.

In June, the airline had reported far lower loads (77.9%) than its peers. In its post result conference call IndiGo's president Aditya Ghosh said the airline had reported lower loads because it had not participated in the price wars and would reconsider its pricing strategy.

Jet Airways-JetLite combine came second with 19.1% share while Air India stood third with 14.8%. The national carrier's market share has been steadily declining since January.

SpiceJet once again topped the occupancy figures with 92% load factor followed by GoAir which reported 90.3% load factor.

According to Samyukth Sridharan, president of Cleartrip, "Passenger demand remains strong owing to low fares. We have seen fares drop 10% in July over the previous month. Last minute fares too are cheaper and that has triggered the 25% growth."

"Diligent planning, efficient utilisation of the resources and a strong determination across all the crew and support departments have lead the airline to significantly better its performance in July. The airline also registered the lowest flight cancellation rate of 0.28% during the same period," SpiceJet said in a statement.

However, SpiceJet market share declined to 11.7% in July from 12.7% in the previous month.