Indian carriers see 12% more domestic flyers at 14.2 million in Nov

Indian airlines carried 1.42 crore passengers on domestic routes in November, nearly 12 per cent more compared to the year-ago period, amid rising air traffic demand.

In terms of domestic market share, IndiGo topped the list with a 63.6 per cent pie, followed by Air India (24.4 per cent), Akasa Air (4.7 per cent) and SpiceJet (3.1 per cent). While all these carriers saw their share rise, the share of Alliance Air was unchanged at 0.7 per cent in November, according to the latest data from the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA).

"Passengers carried by domestic airlines during January-November 2024 were 1,464.02 lakh as against 1,382.34 lakh during the corresponding period of the previous year thereby registering an annual growth of 5.91 per cent and monthly growth of 11.90 per cent," the watchdog said in its monthly report.

Domestic air passenger traffic was at 142.52 lakh in November compared to 127.36 lakh in the same period a year ago.

In October this year, domestic passenger stood at 1.36 crore.

Air India completed the merger of full service carrier Vistara with itself in November.

The On Time Performance (OTP) of scheduled domestic airlines -- computed for the four metro airports at Bangalore, Delhi, Hyderabad, and Mumbai -- took a beating in November.

IndiGo's OTP stood at 74.5 per cent while that of Akasa Air and SpiceJet touched 66.4 per cent and 62.5 per cent, respectively.

The OTP of Air India and Alliance Air were at 58.8 per cent and 58.9 per cent, respectively, the data showed.

Further, the data revealed that 2,24,904 passengers were affected by delays in November. Carriers shelled out nearly Rs 2.90 crore towards facilitation.

Last month, a total of 624 passenger-related complaints were received by the scheduled domestic airlines.

As many as 3,539 passengers were denied boarding in November and an amount of Rs 2.84 crore was spent by airlines towards compensation and providing facilities in this regard.

The data showed that 27,577 passengers were impacted by flight cancellations for which airlines incurred expenses to the tune of Rs 36.79 lakh as compensation and in extending facilities.