Domestic air passenger traffic rises nearly 19% in June

Mumbai: The country's domestic air passenger traffic grew 18.78 per cent to around 1.25 crore in June compared to the year-ago period, according to official data released on Thursday.

In June, IndiGo, Air India, Vistara, AirAsia India and Akasa Air saw an increase in their respective market share amid the grounding of budget carrier Go First. However, SpiceJet's market share continued to decline and fell to 4.4 per cent last month whereas it stood at 7.3 per cent in January this year.

The data from the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) showed that domestic carriers flew 124.87 lakh people in June compared to 105.12 lakh in the same period a year ago.

IndiGo, which carried around 79 lakh passengers in the previous month, increased its market share to 63.2 per cent from 61.4 per cent in May.

Tata Group airlines -- Air India and AirAsia India (now rebranded as AIX Connect) -- flew 12.37 lakh and 10.4 lakh passengers, respectively in June. The market share of Air India stood at 9.7 per cent while that of AirAsia India was at 8 per cent, as per the data.

Full service carrier Vistara, a joint venture between Tata Group and Singapore Airlines, had a market share of 8.1 per cent and flew 10.11 lakh passengers in June.

Launched in August last year, Akasa Air's market share stood at 4.9 per cent as it flew 6.18 lakh passengers last month.

SpiceJet, which has been put under enhanced surveillance by the DGCA, flew 5.55 lakh passengers in June and its market share dropped to 4.4 per cent.

In terms of On Time Performance (OTP) in June, Vistara topped the list at 88.3 per cent, followed by IndiGo and Akasa Air (both at 87.6 per cent). The OTP is calcuated for four key airports -- Delhi,Mumbai, Bengaluru and Hyderabad, as per the data.

Cash-strapped Go First stopped flying from May 3 and prior to the grounding, it had a market share of 6.4 per cent in April.