Early festive season sees air traffic grow the fastest this September

Budget carrier IndiGo keeps lead, with one in three preferring to fly with it

The festive season saw the domestic air passenger traffic growing at its fastest this year last month. The country’s eight registered scheduled airlines saw the traffic go up 27.8 per cent to 5.82 million passengers in September from 4.55 million passengers who had travelled by air in the same month last year.

The number of passengers carried by domestic airlines in September was also the second highest in absolute terms this year. Earlier in May, airlines had seen the traffic increase by 7.9 per cent to 6.02 million passengers.

Budget carrier IndiGo continued to maintain a strong lead, with nearly one in three travellers preferring to fly with it.

IndiGo recorded market share of 32.8 per cent during the month, significantly higher than Jet Airways’ which, with low-cost arm JetLite’s, accounted for 20.8 per cent of the domestic air travel market.

SpiceJet and Air India registered 18.6 and 16.6 per cent, respectively.

GoAir had a market share of 9.2 per cent, while newcomers Air Costa and AirAsia India had 1.1 per cent and 0.9 per cent, respectively.

Frequent flash sales to fill unused inventory seem to have paid off, with SpiceJet registering the highest passenger load factor (PLF) in September at 85.9 per cent. PLF is a measure of how many seats are being used. GoAir was second, with a PLF of 82.3 per cent.

While Jet Airways, with JetLite, recorded a PLF of 79.95 per cent, IndiGo managed to fill a little less than eight of every 10 seats on its flights, recording a PLF of 77.9 per cent last month.

Air India came fifth, with a PLF of 76.7 per cent.

Air Costa and AirAsia India registered PLFs of 76.4 per cent and 68.7 per cent, respectively.

IndiGo maintained its reputation for on-time performance — 89.9 per cent of its flights were on time from the country’s four privately operated airports.

Jet Airways and JetLite came second, registering on-time performance of 84.5 per cent.

SpiceJet scored behind GoAir in September, with 81.9 per cent of its flights on time. Air India’s record was least impressive, with only 75.2 per cent of its flights taking off on time.

Total passengers carried by domestic airlines between January and September this year stood at 49.15 million against 46.6 million in the same period last year, registering a growth of 5.5 per cent.