Domestic airlines bounce back as bookings rise

Domestic air travel is witnessing green shoots of recovery with a five-time growth in the number of daily passengers since the restart of operations on May 25.

According to data available with the Ministry of Civil Aviation, 1,49,371 domestic passengers flew across the country and 1,384 flights took off and landed.

"More than 9.5 million domestic passengers have now flown since the recommencement of domestic operations on May 25, 2020," said Hardeep Singh Puri, minister of civil aviation in a tweet.

During the four months between May 25 and September 20, some new trends have emerged in the domestic air travel. “The share of online travel agents (OTAs) in daily ticket bookings has touched 70% compared to a little over 50% of the total bookings during the pre-Covid period,” Nishant Pitti, CEO, EaseMyTrip told DH.

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According to data compiled by him, average daily ticket bookings has more than doubled to 1.30 lakh tickets as on day from close to 60,000 tickets booked in the month of June. During the pre-Covid period, daily bookings stood in the range of 4.5 lakh tickets per day.

India’s largest airline IndiGo has also seen a reasonable shift towards online booking channels compared to offline channels. “However, we will have to wait for markets to open further to access the shift of patterns,” Sanjay Kumar, Chief Strategy & Revenue Officer, IndiGo said.

Among the OTAs, EaseMyTrip has increased its share to double-digits, while MakeMyTrip has managed to hold on to its top position.

Also, the number of passengers travelling from Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities to Metros is increasing, which is considered a good sign by the industry. Another sign of revival is a rebound in business travellers, Pitti said.

IndiGo has seen 70,000 daily ticket bookings across 500 flights which it expects to go up eventually as the festive season begins. “We carried over 1.68 million passengers in the month of August. The increased number of passengers over the previous month only reflects renewed confidence and trust among the travellers,” Kumar said.

Among the domestic airlines, SpiceJet has seen the highest passenger load factor (PLF) of 76% in August. “We are confident that as more and more states ease travel restrictions and business activity gets back to normal there will be a significant improvement in the operating environment for airlines and we are witnessing some early encouraging signs towards recovery,” SpiceJet spokesperson said.

The demand for travel is now increasing from Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities compared to Metro cities in the initial days of restart of air travel.