Air passenger traffic up marginally in April

Domestic passenger traffic, which fell by 12 per cent in the first three months, picked up marginally last month, with domestic airlines carrying almost two lakh more passengers than in the month of March.

Leading the way were Kingfisher Airlines and its low-cost arm Kingfisher Red carrying 8.61 lakh passengers, followed by Jet Airways and JetLite flying 7.96 lakh and Air India (Domestic) 5.83 lakh, official traffic figures for April released today showed.

Total domestic passengers carried by scheduled domestic carriers in April was 33.15 lakh, compared with 31.60 lakh a month ago.

Among the low-cost carriers, IndiGo flew 4.54 lakh air travellers, followed by 3.87 of SpiceJet and 1.45 lakh of GoAir. The all-Business Class airline Paramount Airways cornered 0.75 lakh passengers share.

As per the percentage share of the airlines, Kingfisher and its low-cost subsidiary cornered 26 per cent of the traffic, closely followed by Jet and JetLite with a combined 24.1 per cent, Air India (Domestic) with 17.6 per cent, IndiGo with 13.7 and SpiceJet with 11.7. GoAir cornered 4.4 per cent and Paramount 2.3 per cent, the figures showed.

The highest seat factor of the domestic airlines in April was bagged by Paramount, which had 88.5 per cent of its aircraft seats full on an average.

No-frill carriers IndiGo and GoAir recorded a high of 72.1 and 72 per cent, JetLite with 68.7, SpiceJet 68 and Jet Airways 65 per cent. Kingfisher registered 64.2 per cent seat factor and Air India (Domestic) 59.9 per cent.

Low seat factor, reflecting a low demand for air travel, has been a major cause of concern for the aviation industry worldwide including in India.

Despite low promotional fares, the number of passengers travelling, which had grown at a high pace of 20 to 25 per cent, slumped in the past several months ever since recession hit the industry.

Domestic air travel between January and March this year had registered a negative growth of 11.69 per cent, as compared to that in the same period last year.