JOIN USThe number of domestic air passengers showed a 22.58 per cent growth in January compared to the same month last year.
As per the Directorate General of Civil Aviation report, domestic airlines carried 76.55 lakh passengers in January as against 62.45 lakh in during the corresponding period of previous year.
Though the number of passengers who took to the skies is increasing every month, the report noted that the seat occupancy slightly decreased compared to December primarily due to the end of tourist season.
None of the airlines except SpiceJet managed to clock more than 90 per cent seat occupancy. Also, except for SpiceJet that had a 92.1 per cent seat occupancy, Air Pegasus and Trujet, no other carrier had an increase in seat occupancy in January compared to December.
SpiceJet had a seat occupancy of 92.1 per cent, while market leader IndiGo had 84.7 per cent, Jet Airways 82.5 per cent, GoAir 84.9 per cent and Air India 81.7 per cent.
In a statement, SpiceJet said that it was for the ninth consecutive month in a row that it has recorded the highest passenger load factor of all airlines in India.
In addition, it said, the cancellation of services for the airline at 0.5 per cent was the lowest of all pan India operators and the On-Time Performance was amongst the best.
The overall cancellation rate of scheduled domestic airlines for January has been 1.10 per cent with Air Costa topping the list with 11.46 per cent followed by Air Pegasus 10.83 per cent. Air India had 1.91 per cent while IndiGo had 0.97 per cent in this regard.
During January 2016, a total of 823 passenger related complaints had been received by the scheduled domestic airlines. The number of complaints per 10,000 passengers carried for the month of January 2016 has been 1.1.
IndioGo continued to be the leader with a market share of 35.6 per cent followed by Jet Airways 18.7 per cent, Air India 16 per cent and SpiceJet 13.2 per cent.