Domestic air traffic in Jan to Nov grows by 3.86 pc year-on-year

Domestic airlines carried 13.1 crore passengers during January to November this year as against 12.6 crore during the corresponding period of the previous year, marking a growth of 3.86 per cent.

Data released on Thursday by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) showed that domestic air passenger traffic totalled 1.29 crore in November, up 11 per cent from 1.16 crore in October.

Of these, private carriers flew 1.13 crore passengers while government-owned Air India carried 15.6 lakh passengers.

"We are happy to inform a return to double-digit growth," said a DGCA official. "This is the best we had so far. With 628 aircraft in our operational fleet, we have enough seat capacity to shoulder the growth."

SpiceJet clocked the highest load factor at 92.8 per cent in November while GoAir reported the figure at 92.7 per cent and IndiGo at 91.4 per cent. Air India had a load factor of 83 per cent.

DGCA said a total of 932 passenger-related complaints were received last month by scheduled domestic airlines. The number of complaints per 10,000 passengers worked out to about 0.72.

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