August air passenger traffic up 24%, says DGCA

Domestic air passenger traffic increased by 23.98 per cent during August to 83.81 lakh, official data showed on Monday.

The domestic passenger traffic during the corresponding month of last year stood at 67.60 lakh.

Commenting on the latest data, Civil Aviation Minister P. Ashok Gajapathi Raju said in a tweet: "Another month of record growth for Indian aviation. August records 24% - highest worldwide."

The data furnished by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) showed that the passenger traffic during January-August period grew by 23 per cent.

"Passengers carried by domestic airlines during January-August 2016 were 644.68 lakh as against 523.55 lakh during the corresponding period of previous year thereby registering a growth of 23.14 per cent," the DGCA said in its statistical analysis for the last month.

During July, passenger traffic had risen by 25.82 per cent to 85.08 lakh from 67.62 lakh in the corresponding month last year.

The data showed that low-cost carrier (LCC) SpiceJet had the highest passenger load factor (PLF) during the month under review at over 93.2 per cent.

The LCC was followed by budget passenger carriers -- GoAir (86) and AirAsia India (83.3).

Further, the data on the on-time performance showed that IndiGo led the industry with 83.8 per cent punctuality rate at four major airports of Bengaluru, Delhi, Hyderabad and Mumbai.

It was followed by SpiceJet and Vistara both (83.1), Jet Airways and JetLite (76.9) and Air India (71.8).

Meanwhile, Air Carnival had the highest number of cancellations at 20 per cent followed by Trujet (13.06) and Air Costa (6.85).

"The overall cancellation rate of scheduled domestic airlines for the month of August 2016 has been 0.90 per cent," the aviation regulator said.

According to the data, a total of 885 passenger related complaints had been received last month.

Budget passenger carrier IndiGo achieved the highest market share in the month under review at 39.9 per cent followed by Jet Airways (16.4), Air India (14.6), SpiceJet (12.6), GoAir (8) and JetLite (2.8).

Vistara reported a market share of 2.4 per cent, followed by AirAsia India (2.2), Air Costa (0.7) and Trujet (0.4).

--IANS

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