India's air traffic expands 29% in July

The number of passengers carried by domestic airlines increased by 29 per cent to 6.75 million in July as falling fuel prices and discounts made air travel more affordable.

These carriers had ferried 5.22 million passengers in July last year. In June, local airlines carried 6.60 million passengers.

The number of passengers carried by domestic airlines during January-July 2015 stood at 45.58 million against 37.63 million during the corresponding period of the previous year, recording a growth of 21.13 per cent. 

The cumulative figures are for Air India and nine other private carriers, including Jet Airways, SpiceJet and IndiGo.

No-frills carrier IndiGo continued to dominate the market with a share of 35.8 per cent in July while SpiceJet remained on top in terms of passenger load factor that touched 93.4 per cent during the month, according to latest official data.

IndiGo flew 2.42 million passengers in July, the highest for any carrier. Air India ferried 1.09 million people while Jet Airways and Jet Lite together carried 15.37 lakh people during the month.

In terms of passenger load factor or seat occupancy rate, SpiceJet continued to be on top at 93.4 per cent, while rival IndiGo clocked 78.4 per cent in July.

SpiceJet also improved its PLF marginally from 93.2 per cent in June, whereas IndiGo witnessed a decline from 86.6 per cent in June.

Air India's passenger load factor rose to 77.8 per cent last month from 73.5 per cent in June.

In July, Jet Airways' passenger load factor touched 81 per cent, Jet Lite (80.1 per cent), Go Air (81.2 per cent), Vistara (60.3 per cent), Air Asia (80.2 per cent), Air Costa (81.7 per cent) and Air Pegasus (71.5 per cent).

However, overall passenger load factor of domestic airlines declined in July, according to aviation regulator DGCA.

This, it noted, has been due mainly on account of tourist season coming to an end.

The overall cancellation rate of scheduled domestic airlines for July 2015 has been 0.53 per cent.

During July 2015, DGCA said, scheduled domestic airlines received a total of 802 passenger related complaints, which translates to 1.2 complaints per 10,000 passengers.

All the scheduled domestic airlines complied with the mandatory capacity deployment requirements contained in the Route Dispersal Guidelines in July, DGCA said.

The overall cancellation rate of scheduled domestic airlines for July stood at 0.53 per cent with little over 47 per cent instances caused due to technical issues.

The maximum cancellation was by Air Costa (4.67 per cent) while the least was by IndiGo at 0.11 per cent. Air Pegasus' cancellation rate stood at 2.50 per cent, Air India's at 1.12 per cent, Jet Airways' at 0.52 per cent, SpiceJet's at 0.49 per cent, Go Air's at6 0.46 per cent, Vistara's at 0.37 per cent, Air Asia's at 0.30 per cent and that of Jet Lite at 0.22 per cent.

There are more than 70 foreign carriers operating to/from India. At the time of compilation of this report, DGCA said it received on-time performance (OTP) data of 39 carriers.

The overall on-time performance (OTP) of these 39 carriers for Jul 2015 has been 81 per cent in departures and 75.1 per cent in arrivals.