Air passenger traffic increases by over 20% in last year: DGCA

The domestic aviation industry has got another reason to cheer, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) in its latest data release has said that the number of passengers flown by the Indian airlines witnessed a huge jump of 20.34 percent in the period January-December 2015 and stood at 81.09 million, compared to 67.38 million they had flown in same period last year.

The DGCA has further said that in the past four months of the current year (January-April) domestic passengers growth is 23 per cent at 30 million and expects that at this rate, it will cross 100 million domestic passengers by the end of this year which perhaps is the highest in the entire world.

The carriers collectively flew 7.93 million passengers, 21 percent more than 6.55 million passengers they carried in April 2015. IndiGo improved its market share to a fourth-month high of 38.7 in April. Air India improved its share to 15.1 percent in April from 14.7 percent in March, while SpiceJet saw its share go up marginally to 12.9 percent from 12.8 percent in the preceding month and Go Air witnessed a growth to 8.5 percent from 8.3 percent in the previous month. On the other hand, Jet Airways posted a decline to 15.9 percent in April from 17.6 percent in March. New airlines, Air Costa and Vistara saw a modest improvement while AirAsia India's share declined in April.

According to the DGCA data, passenger load factor (PLF) was recorded highest for SpiceJet of 93.2 percent, followed by Go Air's 87.8 percent and 85.8 percent of IndiGo. Air India improved its PLF to 78.9 percent from 75.7 percent in March.In absolute terms, IndiGo carried 3.06 million passengers in April, Jet Airways 1.26 million, Air India 1.20 million and SpiceJet 1.02 million passengers.

Air traffic has been posting more than 20 per cent growth over the past several months with travel demand in April surging to 20.93 per cent over the same month of 2015 driven by lower fares. According to the data from the country’s Ministry of Civil Aviation, the number of passengers carried by Indian airlines on domestic routes had reached 23 million in the first three months of the year, up 24.0% compared to the same period in 2015.