IndiGo benefits most from GoFirst's insolvency, gains market share

InterGlobe Aviation backed Indigo benefited the most from the voluntary bankruptcy or GoFirst, data from aviation regulator DCGA showed. For the month of May, Indigo's market share rose to 61.4 per cent, up 3.9 per cent from April, as per official data released on Thursday. The three Tata Group airlines — Air India, Vistara and AirAsia India — saw an increase of 1.4 per cent from 24.9 per cent to 26.3 per cent in the same period, combined.

The youngest airline in the fray, Akasa Air, saw an increase of 0.8 per cent from 4 per cent to 4.8 per cent, according to DGCA data. The only exception was SpiceJet which saw its domestic market share fall from 5.8 per cent in April to 5.4 per cent this May amidst insolvency pleas by unpaid parties and requests from lessors to take back planes.

From being the fourth largest airline by market share, the Wadia Group-owned Go First now occupies the 8th position with a market share as low as 0.4 per cent. Go First halted operations on May 2 and filed for voluntary bankruptcy resolution application with the arbitration panel, the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) quoting faulty engines supplied by Pratt & Whitney (P&W).

Read | Go First says it will resume operations after DGCA audit

As per the latest data of DGCA, domestic airlines carried 636.07 lakh passengers between January to May 2023, as against 467.37 lakh during the corresponding period of the previous year thereby registering an annual growth of 36.10 per cent.

The shutdown of GoFirst saw load factors of all other major Indian carriers going over 90 per cent, hitting the highest fare buckets. Spicejet topped the list with 94.8 per cent, followed by Vistara (93.2 per cent) and Air Asia (92.8 per cent).

During May 2023, a total of 556 passenger-related complaints had been received by the scheduled domestic airlines as compared to 360 in the previous month. The number of complaints per 10,000 passengers carried for the month of May 2023 was around 0.42, compared to 0.28 in April. Not surprisingly, the maximum number of passenger complaints were related to refunds and the largest share of complaints during the month was received by Go First (44.1 per 10,000 pax).

Additionally, the overall cancellation rate of scheduled domestic airlines for the month of May 2023 stood at 0.44 per cent.

The peak summer holiday month saw demand shoot up, with last-minute flight cancellations from Go First forcing travellers to look for other options. Owing to the significant demand and supply gap, ticket prices soared, and in several cases even touched the top 2-3 fare buckets, which according to industry experts is uncommon.

Amongst the 20 sectors analysed by DGCA, the Delhi-Leh sector stood out as the most profitable across airlines. Vistara sold 14.01 per cent of the total seats in the highest fare bucket, earning the largest (31.19 per cent) revenue in this sector. Nearly 25 per cent of the seats sold by Indigo belonged to the highest bracket, clocking over 30 per cent of the revenue from the sector. GoFirst also had a sizeable presence, with over 5 per cent seats sold, for 9.55 per cent revenue.

Interestingly, with its limited operations in the first week of May, Go First sold over 11 per cent of the seats on the Chennai-Port Blair and Delhi-Patna routes and 4 per cent of seats on the Mumbai-Srinagar routes in the highest fare bracket. The airline garnered 24.5 per cent, 23.2 per cent and 6.92 per cent of revenues respectively in these sectors from the highest fare bracket.

Table: Airline market share as per DGCA

Airline	Market share in Apr ( per cent)	Market share in May( per cent)
IndiGo	57.5	61.4
Vistara	8.7	9.0
Air India	8.6	9.4
Air Asia	7.6	7.9
Go First	6.4	0.4
SpiceJet	5.8	5.4
Akasa Air	4.0	4.8
Alliance Air	1.1	1.4