Indian air traffic rebounds; grows at 22%

Air traffic growth rate in India rebounded to almost pre-recession levels showing a continuous growth recording a 22 per cent rise in the first five months of this year, official figures released today showed.

The number of passengers carried by domestic airlines from January to May this year was 211.38 lakh against 173.34 lakh in the same period last year, clocking a growth of 21.95 per cent, as per the data given by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation.

Before the global financial downturn, Indian air traffic was growing by an average of about 25 per cent.

The figures showed that in May, the total domestic passengers carried by scheduled Indian airlines was 47.85 lakh against 41.88 lakh in April.

Like before, Jet Airways and its subsidiary JetLite together carried the maximum number of passengers at 12.53 lakh, followed by Kingfisher and low-cost Kingfisher Red at 10 lakh. They were followed by Air India (domestic) at 8.47 lakh and all-business class airline Paramount at only 19,000.
   
Among the no-frill carriers, IndiGo bagged a major chunk of the air traffic at 7.53 lakh, followed by SpiceJet at 6.32 lakh and GoAir at 2.81 lakh.
   
In the same month, the highest seat factor or the average number of seats filled in each flight was recorded by no-frill airline IndiGo at 92.3 per cent, followed by SpiceJet at 90.4 and JetLite at 85.4.
   
Kingfisher registered a load factor of 83.2 per cent, followed by Jet Airways at 82.5 and Air India (Domestic) at 77.8 per cent.
   
The percentage share of the carriers in the same month was led by Jet-JetLite at 26.2 per cent, Kingfisher and its low cost subsidiary with 20.9 per cent, Air India (Domestic) 17.7, IndiGo 15.7, SpiceJet 13.2, GoAir 5.9 and Paramount 0.4, the figures showed.