Domestic air passenger traffic rises 9.1 per cent in January

Domestic air passenger traffic rose 9.1 per cent in January, with the country's airlines carrying 125.08 lakh passengers during the month, according to DGCA data released on Wednesday. Domestic air passenger traffic in January last year was 114.65 lakh. The market share of no-frills airline IndiGo for January fell to 42.5 per cent and that of national carrier Air India dropped to 12.2 per cent, showed the latest data by the aviation regulator.

In December last year, IndiGo's market share was 43.2 per cent while Air India's market share was 12.4 per cent.The January data of the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) showed that the market share of SpiceJet, Jet Airways, GoAir, Air Asia, Vistara stood at 13.3 per cent, 11.9 per cent, 8.7 per cent, 5.3 per cent and 3.8 per cent, respectively.

In December last year, these five airlines had the market share of 12.3 per cent, 12.2 per cent, 8.8 per cent, 5.3 per cent and 3.8 per cent, respectively.

About the 9.1 per cent growth of domestic air traffic in January, Sharat Dhall, the Chief Operating Officer (B2C) of Yatra.Com said, "The percentage of growth has been affected due to unprecedented flight cancellations by various airlines impacting the overall capacity and hence market growth adversely."

"Additionally, with January marking the end of the holiday season, there is a dip in travel, but we expect a pickup in demand towards the end of February and March with the semester breaks in schools as well as long weekends like Maha Shivratri and Holi," he said.

Last month, 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.

Shilpa Bhatia, the Chief Sales and Revenue Officer, SpiceJet, said, "In January 2019 we recorded a PLF of 90.9%. This is the 46th month in a row that SpiceJet, among the major scheduled carriers, has flown with the highest loads in the Indian skies."

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Passenger Load Factor (PLF) measures the capacity utilisation in an airline.

The PLF of a plane is calculated by first dividing the number of passengers to number of seats in a plane, and then multiplying the resulting number by 100.