SpiceJet, Vistara gain market share

On seat occupancy, both carriers show improvement

Riding on a fresh lease of life, low-cost carrier SpiceJet is slowly increasing its market share while a struggling Vistara has also improved its performance roping in more number of passengers.

While IndiGo continued to garner most of the market share, SpiceJet and Vistara increased its presence at the cost of Jet Airways and Air India.

According to latest DGCA statistics, SpiceJet increased its market share to 10.8 per cent in April compared with 9.7 per cent in March while Vistara clocked 1.2 per cent market share as against 0.8 per cent in March. SpiceJet carried 7.07 lakh passengers compared with 6.09 lakh in March while Vistara flew 79,000 in place of 53,000. Vistara’s on time performance (OTP) was 96.3 per cent while AirAsia India clocked 100 per cent.

On seat occupancy also, both the carriers have shown improvement. SpiceJet was first in terms of all the airlines to have seat occupancy of 88.7 per cent followed by IndiGo (85.7 per cent).

Vistara improved its seat occupancy to 67.3 per cent in April compared with 53.6 per cent in March. While the Tata Sons-Singapore Airlines owned airline clocked 45.4 per cent in January, its first month of operations, it had 58.6 per cent seat occupancy in February.

Overall, passengers carried by domestic airlines during January-April 2015 were 251.05 lakh as against207 lakh during the corresponding period of the previous year, thereby registering a growth of 21.28 per cent.

In April, domestic airlines carried 65.59 lakh passengers while it was 53.18 lakh in the same month last year.

Flash sale
Meanwhile, SpiceJet is launching a five-hour sale on Saturday to celebrate its tenth anniversary with a flat 10 discount on select flights.  The sale will be open between 10 am and 3 pm for travel between July 1 and October 15. However, tickets for travel between July 16 and July 20 as well as October 1 and October 5 are excluded from the sale christened 'Happy Birthday to Us' flash sale.

The offer is applicable on select direct flights only on SpiceJet’s domestic network. Tickets for this new sale can be booked on www.spicejet.com, on online travel portals, and through travel agents. The sale is not available on the airline call centre or at its airport ticket offices.