Gurgaon- based domestic low-cost airline IndiGo Airlines maintained its leadership position in the domestic aviation sector by carrying 85.03 lakh passengers in the January-March period for the calendar year 2016. As a consequence the market share of the company during the period stood at 37%, the latest cumulative data up to March made available by the Director General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) showed.
Mumbai based Jet airways and country’s national air carrier Air India came distant second and third respectively by flying 41.94 lakh and 35.38 lakh passengers within the country. The market share of the two carriers in the January-March period stood at 18.2% and 15.4% respectively.
The market share of another low cost carrier SpiceJet stood at 13% while the same for Mumbai-based Go Air stood at 8.1% up to March.
Overall, the number of passengers carried by airlines within the country increased by 24.03% y-o-y in the January – March period to 230.03 lakh from 185.46 lakh passengers in the corresponding period last year. The increasing number of passengers in the Jan-March, 2016 period is indicative of the trend where airlines are emerging as the preferred mode of transport.
Pertaining to the passenger load factor (PLF) which shows the capacity utilisation of an airline and a key parameter of measuring profitability, Ajay Singh led SpiceJet again topped the chart with 91.1% occupancy. The healthy performance by the airline is result of the high discounts on tickets offered by the airline on all the routes in which the airline operates.
Domestic airlines registered slight decrease in PLF due to end of the tourist season. Spice Jet was followed by Mumbai based GO Air with 86.3% PLF while the country’s most profitable airline Indigo stood third with 85.1% PLF.
With respect to the On Time Performance (OTP) of airlines in the domestic market computed from four airports of Delhi, Mumbai Hyderabad and Bangalore, full service airline Vistara, Indigo, and SpiceJet occupies the first three positions in the list with 91.5%, 86.8 and 84.1% flights operating on time, respectively.
The overall cancellation rate of scheduled domestic airlines for the month of March, 2016 stood at 0.9% while a total of 737 passenger related complaints had been received by the scheduled domestic airlines during the same period.
