Indian air traffic booms in Jan, Feb

Air traffic in the first two months of this year showed a major growth of 19.2 per cent compared with the same period last year, a development that could bring some relief to the loss-making Indian aviation industry.

The total passengers carried in January and February this year was 80.56 lakh (8.056 million) as against 67.61 lakh (6.761 million) in the first quarter of last year, official figures released on Monday showed.

The hike in passenger traffic is likely to have a positive impact on the financial health of the air carriers, most of which have been reeling under heavy losses for the past two years.

Like previous months, Jet Airways and its subsidiary JetLite together led the way in flying most passengers -- 10.28 lakh (1.028 million) in January and 10.08 lakh (1.008 million) in February, followed by Kingfisher and its low-cost subsidiary Kingfisher Red with 9.08 lakh (908,000) and 8.77 lakh (877,000) and Air India (Domestic) with 7.34 lakh (734,000) and 6.63 lakh (663,000).

They were closely followed by no-frills carrier IndiGo which carried 6.25 lakh (625,000) and 5.77 lakh (577,000) in the first two months of this year, followed by SpiceJet with 5.0 lakh (500,000) and 4.65 lakh (465,000) and GoAir with 2.2 lakh (220,000) and 2.11 lakh (211,000). Full-business class airline Paramount carried 72,000 and 62,000, respectively, the figures showed.

Jet and JetLite jointly bagged over one-fourth of the market share in the two months, carrying 25.2 per cent and 26.3 per cent of the total passengers during the period.

Kingfisher and its subsidiary flew 22.2 per cent and 22.7 per cent followed by Air India (Domestic) -- 18.0 per cent and 17.2 per -- while Paramount flew 1.8 per cent and 1.6 per cent of the total passengers.

IndiGo led the low-cost airlines by flying 15.2 per cent and 14.9 per cent in January and February this year followed by SpiceJet with 12.2 per cent and 12.0 per cent and GoAir with 5.4 per cent and 5.5 per cent.

The figures relating to average seats per kilometre and revenue per km showed that an increasing trend in both capacity and demand for air travel continued in February this year as well.

The overall cancellation rate of scheduled domestic airlines for February this year was 1.5 per cent, while the overall On-Time Performance (OTP) of scheduled domestic airlines was recorded at 79.4 per cent.

The DGCA has already directed all the 70 foreign carriers to file reports about their on-time performance on a monthly basis. Of them, only 47 have filed the reports so far.

The on-time performance of these foreign airlines has been 73.7 per cent for departures and 73.6 per cent in arrivals.