Domestic air traffic rises 4.8% to 126.48 lakh in February

Domestic air traffic rose 4.8 per cent on an annual basis to 126.48 lakh in February, while more than 1.55 lakh passengers were affected by flight delays during the same period, according to official data released on Friday.

In February, Air India's market share rose to 12.8 per cent from 12.2 per cent while that of IndiGo marginally dipped to 60.1 per cent from 60.2 per cent in January.

The domestic air traffic climbed to 126.48 lakh in February compared to 120.69 lakh in the year-ago period, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) said. However, the traffic was less than 1.31 crore reported in January.

"Passengers carried by domestic airlines during January - February 2024 were 257.78 lakh, as against 246.11 lakh during the corresponding period of the previous year thereby registering an annual growth of 4.74 per cent and monthly growth of 4.80 per cent," DGCA said.

As many as 1,55,387 passengers were affected due to flight delays in February and scheduled carriers shelled out Rs 222.11 lakh towards facilitation.

The DGCA also said that 29,143 passengers were impacted by cancellations and airlines spent Rs 99.96 lakh towards compensation and facilities.

Last month, a total of 917 passengers were affected due to denied boarding and the amount spent by the airlines for compensation and facilities in this regard was Rs 78.19 lakh.

A total of 791 passenger-related complaints were received by the scheduled domestic airlines in February and the number of complaints per 10,000 passengers carried was around 0.63.

The data showed that 37.8 per cent of the passenger complaints were about flight problems, followed by baggage (19 per cent), refund (16.3 per cent) and customer service (11.1 per cent), as per the data.

Last month, the domestic market share of SpiceJet dropped to 5.2 per cent from 5.6 per cent, Vistara and Akasa Air managed to maintain their share at 9.9 per cent and 4.5 per cent, respectively.

AIX Connect (formerly AirAsia India) cornered a market share of 6.1 per cent in February, unchanged from the previous month, and similarly Alliance Air's share remained the same as the previous month at 1 per cent.

According to the data, the On-Time Performance (OTP) of Air India was 56.4 per cent while that of SpiceJet stood at 59.1 per cent in February.

The OTP -- computed for the four metro airports of Bangalore, Delhi, Hyderabad, and Mumbai -- was 67.4 per cent for Vistara, 72.7 per cent for IndiGo and 72.9 per cent for Akasa Air.

AIX Connect's OTP touched 73.5 per cent in February.

"The overall cancellation rate of scheduled domestic airlines for the month of February 2024 has been 0.90 per cent," DGCA said.

The cancellation rate was the highest for Zoom at 7.69 per cent while it was the lowest for Akasa Air at 0.30 per cent.

Among others, Fly Big's cancellation rate was 7.41 per cent, Alliance Air (3.83 per cent), Indiaone Air (3.18 per cent), SpiceJet (1.54 per cent), IndiGo (0.84 per cent), AIX Connect (0.64 per cent) and Air India (0.62 per cent).

In the case of Star Air and Vistara, the cancellation rate was at 0.60 per cent and 0.58 per cent, respectively.