Air India posts best monthly on-time performance among carriers after years

When it was a run by the government, the airline was usually at the bottom of DGCA's list for on-time performance

Air India posted 90.8 per cent on-time performance (OTP) in October, beating all other Indian carriers for the first time in many years, according to the monthly data released by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) on Tuesday.

The OTP data was for four domestic airports: Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad. 

After winning the bid on October 8 last year, the Tata Group took over Air India on January 27. Six months later, Singapore Airlines veteran Campbell Wilson took charge as chief executive officer and managing director of Air India. One of his first pushes was to improve the airline's OTP.

When Air India was a government-run airline, it generally used to be at the bottom of DGCA's OTP list.

Not only did the airline beat others in OTP terms in October, it also crossed the landmark of flying more than 1 million domestic passengers in a month after a long time.

Air India flew 1.03 million domestic passengers in October, according to the DGCA data. 

Meanwhile, Go First's domestic passengers fell for the second consecutive month in October. Almost half of Go First's aircraft fleet is currently grounded due to engine supply and maintenance issues. 

Indian carriers flew 11.4 million domestic passengers in October this year: about a 27 per cent jump year-on-year.