The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) in its latest data has showed that domestic air passenger traffic of India declined 39.60% to 77.34 lakh in January 2021 as compared to 127.83 lakh passengers flown by the Indian carriers on domestic routes in January 2020. It added that domestic air passenger traffic declined as the pandemic continues to hit air travel demand.
It noted that the passenger load factor, a measure to assess how much of an airline's passenger carrying capacity has been utilised, during the previous month has shown a declining trend compared to December primarily due to the tourist season. As per the data, the load factor of six major domestic airlines--IndiGo, SpiceJet, Air India, GoAir, Vistara and AirAsia India -- stood between 70% and 64.9% in January. Budget carrier IndiGo flew the most number of passengers at 42.03 lakh with a market share of 54.30%followed by rival carrier
The data also showed that Vistara which carried 9.92 lakh passengers during the month, cornering 12.8% share of the total domestic traffic in the month. IndiGo also recorded the highest on-time performance during the month with on an average 93.7% of its flights from four metro airports --Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru and Hyderabad --departing/arriving on time. Besides, the overall cancellation rate of scheduled domestic airlines for the month of January 2021 has been 1.67%.