Air passenger traffic growth crawls at 3.74% in 2019

India's domestic airlines registered nearly 15% drop in its passenger traffic growth in the last 12 months, reflecting the trials and tribulations the civil aviation sector is passing through.

According to air passenger traffic data released by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), the domestic air traffic registered an annual growth of 3.74% in 2019 as against the 18.60% growth registered in 2018.

The domestic airlines ferried a record 14.41 crore passengers in 2019 as against the 13.89 crore in 2018.

Also, air passenger traffic grew at a mere 2.56% in December 2019 over the 11.18% growth witnessed in November on account of the festive season.

Passenger load factor, the metric the measures the percentage of seats filled by an airline, of all major airlines – Air India, SpiceJet, GoAir, IndiGo, AirAsia India and Vistara – declined in December 2019 as compared to November last year.

IndiGo maintained its lead position with 47.5% share of the domestic passenger market in December 2019, while SpiceJet's increased its market share from 16.1% in November to 16.5% in December.

The market share of Air India, GoAir, AirAsia India and Vistara was 11.9%, 10.2%, 7% and 6.1% respectively in December.

The air passenger traffic grew every month last year, barring April which registered negative growth, due to the grounding of Boeing 737 MAX aircraft and shutting down of Jet Airways.

The month of December also saw a cancellation rate of 2.34%, largely on account of inclement weather.

The last month also witnessed a total of 957 passenger-related complaints by the domestic airlines, which came to 0.74 grievances per 10,000 passengers.

Air India topped the list of with 2.3 complaints per 10,000 passengers in December, while GoAir was on number two position with 0.9 complaints per 10,000 passengers.

The most common complaint of the passengers was about problems related to the flight (48%), followed by customer service (29.6%). As many as 3.8% of the 957 complaints were related to staff behaviour.