IndiGo rules Indian skies as traffic increases 15.5% in Dec

India's domestic air passenger traffic increased by 15.29 per cent in December to 64.40 lakh passengers from 55.86 lakh passengers in the corresponding month last year, official data showed today.

For the full year, passenger traffic in 2014 rose 9.7 per cent to 673.83 lakh from 614.26 lakh in 2013.

IndiGo, at present India's only profit-making airline, had a 31 per cent market share, followed by Jet Airways at 21.7 per cent and state-run Air India third with an 18.4 per cent share of the market in the last financial year, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA).

All seven domestic carriers including AirAsia India and regional airline Air Coasta also reported a higher seat factor in December 2014 as compared to November on account of the holiday season, according to the DGCA data.

Cancellations, passenger plaints
SpiceJet had the highest percent of cancellations at 31.95 per cent followed by Air India's domestic operations (2.92), Jet Airways (2.46), AirAsia India (1.92), JetLite (1.80), IndiGo (1.38) and GoAir at 1.29 per cent.

"Overall cancellation rate of scheduled domestic airlines for the month of December 2014 has been 6.99 per cent," the DGCA said. "The overall cancellation rate is high due to low visibility conditions at airports in northern India.''

On SpiceJet, it said the high cancellations are ''due to cancellation of a number of flights by it on account of financial difficulties."

GoAir had the largest number of passenger complaints in the month under review at 6.2 per cent out per 10,000 passengers.

It was followed by SpiceJet at 3.1 per cent, Air India (2.1), AirAsia India (1.8), Jet Airways and JetLite combined (1.5), IndiGo (1) and Air Costa at 0.4 per cent.

These figures further underline that IndiGo rules the Indian skies at present.