Air passenger traffic rises 21% to 79 lakh in April

Domestic air passenger traffic rose 20.93% in April to 79.32 lakh from 65.59 lakh registered during the corresponding month of last year, official data showed on Friday. During March, the air passenger traffic had surged by 25.25% to 78.72 lakh.

Data furnished by aviation regulator Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) showed that passenger traffic during the January-April period grew by 23.22%.

"Passengers carried by domestic airlines during January-April 2016 were 309.35 lakhs as against 251.05 lakhs during the corresponding period of previous year thereby registering a growth of 23.22%," the DGCA said in its monthly statistical analysis.

Further, the data on the on-time performance showed IndiGo leading the industry with 88.5% punctuality at four major airports of Bengaluru, Delhi, Hyderabad and Mumbai. 

It was followed by Vistara (84.9), Jet Airways and JetLite (83.3), SpiceJet (82.4), and Air India`s domestic operations (79.3) being on schedule.

Meanwhile, Air Pegasus had the highest number of cancellations at 14.22% followed by Trujet (1.34), Air Costa (0.97), Air India`s domestic operations (0.74), Jet Airways (0.69).

"The overall cancellation rate of scheduled domestic airlines for the month of April 2016 has been 0.44%," the aviation regulator said.

According to the data, a total of 674 passenger related complaints had been received last month. The LCC IndiGo achieved the highest market share in the month under review at 38.7% followed by Jet Airways (15.9), Air India (15.1), SpiceJet (12.9), GoAir (8.5) and JetLite (3.00%).

Vistara reported a market share of 2.3%, followed by AirAsia India (2.1), Air Costa (0.8), Trujet (0.4) and Air Pegasus (0.3).