India’s domestic air passenger traffic hit its highest level in five months in October, spurred by festival season-related travel.
Traffic rose 27% year-on-year to 1.14 crore, according to the monthly data released by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation. It was over 10% higher than the traffic in September.
IndiGo, which is operated by InterGlobe Aviation Ltd., remained at the top, but its market share dropped 100 basis points to 56.7% in October as compared to the previous month.
AirAsia India, which will soon be part of Air India, saw its market share jump to 7.6% from 5.9% in September. With Air India’s 9.1% market share and full-service carrier Vistara’s 9.2% market share, the Tata Group controls 25.9% of the domestic aviation market.
The Wadia Group-controlled Go Air’s market share fell to 7% from 7.9% in September, while the late Rakesh Jhunjhunwala’s recently launched airline Akasa Air’s market share inched up to 1.4% from 0.9% in the preceding month.
SpiceJet Ltd.’s market share remained flat at 7.3%.
The Tata Group’s efforts to improve Air India’s on-time performance seemed to pay off, as 90.8% of the airline’s flights were on time in October, taking the lead among all the major carriers.
The next two punctual airlines were also from the house of Tata, with Vistara (89.1%) in the second spot and AirAsia India (89.1%) at the third.
IndiGo remained in fourth place with an on-time performance of 87.5%.
SpiceJet and Go Air were far from punctual, with on-time performances of 68.9% and 60.7%, respectively.
However, SpiceJet and Go Air were the top two in terms of the load-factor with 88.1% and 86.7%, respectively, followed by Vistara at 85.5%, AirAsia India at 84.2%, Air India at 82.7% and IndiGo at 82.1%, among major airlines.