India's domestic air traffic grows to 16.13 crore in 2024

New Delhi: India's domestic air traffic rose 6 per cent to 16.13 crore in 2024 on an annual basis, according to the latest official data.

The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) on Wednesday said airlines carried over 1.49 crore passengers in December 2024, an increase of 8.19 per cent compared to December 2023 when it stood at nearly 1.38 crore.

Airlines are expanding their fleet as well as networks to meet the rising air travel demand in the country, which is one of the world's fastest-growing civil aviation markets.

"Passengers carried by domestic airlines during January December 2024 were 1,613.31 lakh as against 1,520.32 lakh during the corresponding period of the previous year, thereby registering an annual growth of 6.12 per cent and monthly growth of 8.19 per cent," DGCA said in its report on Wednesday.

In December, the market share of IndiGo stood at 64.4 per cent while that of Air India touched 26.4 per cent. Akasa Air and SpiceJet had a share of 4.6 per cent and 3.3 per cent, respectively.

The On-Time Performance (OTP) took a beating in December. IndiGo had the highest OTP of 73.4 per cent, followed by Air India (67.6 per cent), Akasa Air (62.7 per cent), SpiceJet (61.5 per cent) and Alliance Air (55.6 per cent).

The figures are computed for four metro airports -- Delhi, Bangalore, Mumbai and Hyderabad.

The overall flight cancellation rate of the scheduled domestic carriers stood at 1.07 per cent in December last year.

Flight cancellations affected 67,622 passengers and airlines spent Rs 1.26 crore towards compensation and facilities in this regard. The data also showed that 2,79,985 passengers were impacted due to flight delays and airlines shelled out Rs 3.78 crore towards facilitation in December.

During the same period, as many as 2,147 passengers were denied boarding and airlines spent Rs 1.76 crore towards compensation and facilities.