Mounting trouble: Indian carriers least punctual in last six months

The average daily on-time performance (OTP) of all major carriers in July was the lowest in the last six months, according to data from the Ministry of Civil Aviation reviewed by Business Standard.

Flight disruptions in July were caused by a faulty update from the cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike that led to an outage of Microsoft apps and services, heavy rains in Mumbai and Delhi, and the sudden shift of flights from Terminal 1 to the other two terminals after the roof collapse at Delhi.

Airline executives stated that while the collapse at Terminal 1 occurred on June 28, the sudden shift of flights to the other terminals induced significant delays.

In July, SpiceJet’s OTP at 43.49 per cent was the worst among all the major carriers. Air India's OTP in July stood at 59.24 per cent, the second worst. IndiGo, Air India, SpiceJet, Vistara, and AIX Connect did not immediately respond to Business Standard’s requests for statements on this matter.

“We continuously analyse complex operations data to identify improvements that we can make to our processes,” said an Akasa Air spokesperson.

“An airline’s OTP can be affected by multiple factors including weather patterns, especially during the monsoon and dense fog seasons, and the extreme weather conditions we have seen this monsoon season have had an impact on the entire aviation industry,” the spokesperson said.

“At Akasa Air, we have established various processes to build dependability into our network and operations design and have consistently been the country’s most on time airline,” the spokesperson added.

Average daily on-time performance (in %)

	IndiGo	Air India	SpiceJet	Vistara	AIX Connect	Akasa Air
Feb	75.08	60.19	67.76	68.67	75.77	74.27
March	82.03	77.56	68.58	77.60	85.07	85.21
April	78.76	78.85	70.84	78.17	82.18	89.59
May	75.72	73.31	67.01	82.15	76.03	86.43
June	77.17	67.82	55.37	78.53	80.43	80.46
July	64.43	59.24	43.49	64.67	73.27	65.55

Source: Ministry of Civil Aviation