Chennai: Despite facing turbulent air for prolonged periods, the domestic air passenger traffic rose 6.19 per cent in June over the year-ago period, state reports.
Data from regulator DGCA states that local carriers took on board 12.02 million passengers in the month. It follows a marginal under three per cent growth in May ferrying 11.2 million passengers.
But this was after a 4.5 per cent degrowth in April, the first time in six years, due to the grounding of Jet Airways and the resultant spike in ticket prices during the peak summer holidays, reported the <I>PTI<P>.
The data that was release on Friday showed that country’s largest carrier, IndiGo continued its market leadership ferrying 5.77 million passengers in the month.
It was followed by rival Spicejet with 1.86 million, Air India at 1.55 million passengers, while Goair (1.33 million), AirAsia India (7.72 lakh) and Vistara (6.48 lakh) followed closely.
However, IndiGo’s market share declined 0.9 per cent to 48.1 per cent, while Spicejet cornered 15.6 per cent of the traffic volume and Air India’s had 12.9 percent of the pie.
Significantly for IndiGo, this was the third consecutive loss of market share as it had notched up 49.9 per cent in April, which declined to 49 per cent in May.
In terms of seat factor, which is a measure of how much of an airline’s capacity is used or average percentage of seats filled, Goair unseated Spicejet, which had a long streak of highest load-factor, with 94 per cent load factor in June, while Spicejet’s stood at 93.7 per cent and AirAsia India’s at 90.7 per cent.
The DGCA attributed the marginal improvement in traffic volume to the ongoing tourist season. As per the DGCA data, Goair continued to top the on-time performance chart for the past many months with 86.8 per cent of its flights departing and arriving on time from the four key airports, in June as well.
The on-time performance is measured only from the operations of airlines from the New Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru and Hyderabad airports.
AirAsia India had the second highest on-time performance at 85.1 per cent while Indigo, which used to be best performer for long, was a distant third at 83.5 per cent.
Also, of the 750 complaints received by the regulator for various deficiencies in services, Air India had the maximum number of complaints at 278, followed by Indigo with 275 complaints against its services.
All the airlines together shelled out Rs 4.21 crore to 2.32 lakh passengers in penalties for delayed/cancelled flights as well as denied boarding, the DGCA said.
| What’s happening at Jet? |
| Jet Airways, which is undergoing insolvency proceedings, will receive interim funding from its lenders, according to a regulatory filing.
The full-service carrier shuttered operations in April after it ran out of cash. The airline is now managed by an insolvency resolution professional appointed by the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT). The proposal to raise interim finance and key terms for the eligibility criteria for the prospective resolution applicants have been approved by the requisite majority of voting share, the filing said. The first meeting of Jet Airways’ committee of creditors, after the airline was referred for resolution under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, was held on 16 July. On Thursday, the resolution professional announced that he has received claims worth Rs 24,887 crore in 16,643 claims, including Rs 8,462 crore by financial creditors, against the company. |