Domestic air travel increases during the month of March

The Dollar Business Bureau

India’s aviation sector has continued to grow, with the total number of passengers travelling in the month of March increasing to 78.72 lakhs. The DGCA’s (Directorate General of Civil Aviation) data showed that domestic airliners carried over 78 lakh passengers in the month of March when compared to 74.76 lakh in February.

The low-cost, Gurgaon based airliner Indigo led the way by carrying 85.03 lakh passengers in the Jan-Mar 2016 period. As a result the share of the company increased to 38.4% in March, as per the cumulative data released by the DGCA. Indigo was followed by the Mumbai based Jet Airways, that carried 41.94 lakh passengers,  whose market share increased to 17.6%, followed by the national carrier Air India that flew 35.38 lakh passengers with its market share escalating to 14.7%. However, the net passenger growth in the domestic market stood at around 5.3%.

Two other airlines, Spice Jet and Go Air’s market shares stood at 13% and 8.1% upto March.
On the passenger load factor (PLF) front, which clearly indicates the capacity utilization of an airline and a key factor in measuring its profitability, Spice Jet emerged the leader, with 91.1%, followed by Go Air, Indigo, AirAsia and Air Costa at 86.3%, 85.1%, 82.7% and 82.1% respectively. An airline’s healthy performance is determined by the discounts on the tickets it offers on the routes it operates.
However, the domestic airlines registered a slight decrease in PLF as the tourist season came to an end. The DGCA release showed that passengers carried by domestic airlines during the first quarter of 2016 was 230.03 lakh as against 185.46 lakh carried during the previous year, indicating a growth of 24.03%.

On the on time performance parameter based on the airline operating on time, the data gathered from Delhi, Bangalore, Mumbai and Hyderabad showed Vistara airlines as the most punctual airline with 91.5%, Indigo at 86.8% and Spice Jet at 84.1% respectively.

The overall cancellation rate of the domestic airlines for 2016 March, stood at 0.9% with 737 passenger complaints being received in the same period.