Domestic air traffic is slowest in 50 months

Domestic air-traffic registered a growth of 9.10% year-on-year in January, the slowest rise in the last 50 months.

According to the air-traffic data released by civil aviation regulator DGCA on Wednesday, 1.25 crore passengers chose to travel by air in January as against 1.14 crore for the corresponding period last year.

The slower growth in air-traffic has been attributed to the end of the tourist season and the increase in airfares by airliners to offset higher fuel cost and a weaker rupee.

Earlier, the domestic air-traffic had witnessed 8.61% growth in October 2014.

The DGCA data showed that that passenger load factor for SpiceJet was the highest among domestic airlines at 90.9% in January 2019, despite being lower than its December figure of 92.7%.

Passenger load factor (PLF) for Air Asia, GoAir, IndiGo, Jet Airways, Vistara, and Air India was 88.4%, 87.4%, 86.4 %, 86.1%, 84.2%, and 80% respectively, in January 2019.

The PLF in January 2019 also showed a decreasing trend compared to the previous month, according to the report released by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA).

Bengaluru-based Star Air, which launched its services on January 25 registered a PLF of 53%.

GoAir registered the best on-time-performance, with 75.9% of its flights flying within the allotted block time, followed by Vistara (75.3%), SpiceJet (69.2%) and IndiGo (64%).

Air India was the worst performing airline with only 56.6% flights taking off/landing on time.

“The percentage of growth has been affected due to unprecedented flight cancellations by various airlines impacting the overall capacity and hence market growth adversely,” Sharat Dhall, Chief Operating Officer (B2C) of Yatra.com said in a statement here.

In January, a total of 917 passenger-related complaints were received by the scheduled domestic airlines. The number of complaints per 10,000 passengers carried for the month of January 2019 has been around 0.73, the DGCA data showed.

As many as 3,156 passengers were denied boarding and 37,819 fliers were impacted by flight cancellations in January. Further, 2,64,724 people were affected by flight delays last month.