Domestic air traffic jumps 11% in November

India's domestic air traffic rose 11% year-on-year to 116.79 lakh passengers in November 2022 compared with 105.16 lakh passengers in the corresponding period last year, data released by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) shows.

Domestic airlines carried 1,105.10 lakh passengers during January-November 2022, up from 726.11 lakh during the year-ago period, registering an annual growth of 52.19%, the civil aviation regulator says.

Passenger load factor — a metric to measure the percentage of available seats filled — was the highest for SpiceJet at 92% in November, followed by 91.7% for Vistara.

IndiGo, the country's largest carrier, flew 65.01 lakh passengers in November, clocking a market share of 55.7%.

Vistara, a joint venture of the Tatas and Singapore Airlines, remained the second largest domestic airline. The full service carrier's market share rose slightly from 9.2% in October to 9.3% in November. Tata Group-owned Air India became the third largest domestic carrier with 9.1% market share last month. The erstwhile national carrier flew 10.63 lakh passengers in November. The market share of Air Asia, another Tata Sons-backed carrier, remained unchanged at 7.6% in November. Tata Sons last month signed an agreement with Singapore Airlines (SIA) to merge Vistara with Air India. This is a part of the Tata group's strategy to consolidate its aviation businesses under a single brand. Singapore Airlines, which owns a 49% stake in Tata-SIA Airlines, the owner of Vistara, will invest ₹2,058.5 crore in Air India.

Ajay Singh-led cash strapped SpiceJet witnessed a marginal increase in market share from 7.3% in October to 7.5% in November. The low-cost carrier flew 8.76 lakh passengers last month.

The market share of budget airline GoFrist rose from 7% in October to 7.5% in November. It carried 8.70 lakh passengers.

The overall cancellation rate of scheduled domestic airlines for November 2022 has been 0.25%. Alliance Air’s cancellation rate was the highest at 1.50%.

During November 2022, a total of 403 passenger related complaints had been received by the scheduled domestic airlines. The number of complaints per 10,000 passengers carried for the month of November 2022 has been around 0.35. Alliance Air received the maximum complaints per 10,000 passengers, followed by Star Air and Air India.

In terms of on-time performance, IndiGo topped the charts with 92.5% followed by Air India at 88.2%. On-time performance of scheduled domestic airlines was computed for four metro airports viz. Bangalore, Delhi, Hyderabad and Mumbai, says the aviation regulator.

In the current calendar year, the DGCA has issued the highest number of Commercial Pilot Licenses (CPL) in the last decade.