Air traffic rose by 20% in quarter, less occupancy in March

New Delhi: India’s air passenger traffic rose by an impressive 20.57 percent in the March quarter over the same period a year ago. However, the carriers filled less number of seats in March against February, according to the data released by the DGCA.[caption id=“attachment_2197000” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Representational image: Reuters[/caption] Nine Indian carriers together flew a total of 185.46 lakh passengers in the March quarter of the previous fiscal as against 153.81 lakh passengers ferried by them in January-March quarter of financial year 2013-14. At the same time, the load factor of the domestic airlines in March this year has shown decreasing trend compared to previous month due to end of vacation period of various sectors, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) said. On a month-on-month basis, domestic carriers ferried a total of 62.85 lakh passengers in March with budget carrier IndiGo carrying more than a third of this at 22.86 lakh passengers. This was followed by Jet Airways and its wholly-owned subsidiary JetLite, which together have flown 13.95 lakh passengers in the reporting month. While national carrier Air India stood at a distant third as it transported a total of 10.60 lakh passengers in March 2015, the number of passengers ferried by GoAir and SpiceJet during this period stood at 6.90 lakh and 5.31 lakh respectively. At the same time, Tata-SIA joint venture carrier continued to struggle to attract passengers in its three-class configuration-business, premium economy and economy with the airline flying just 53,000 passengers in March this year. Vistara had launched operations on 9 January. In terms of market share, while Indigo cornered 36.4 percent of the total traffic in March, Jet Airways’ (excluding JetLite) pie during the reporting period stood at 20.56 percent. Air India carried almost 17 percent of the total traffic while SpiceJet and GoAir had 9.7 percent and 8.8 percent market share respectively in the reporting month. Besides, Jet Airways planes clocked the highest seat occupancy at 86.6 percent compared to SpiceJet’s 83.4 percent load factor during the month. However, IndiGo, despite carrying highest number of passengers in the month could fill only 77 percent of seats in its planes while SpiceJet reported a better seat factor at 83.4 percent. Budget carrier GoAir and national carrier Air India’s load factor during this period stood at 80 rpt 80 percent and 76.9 percent respectively. Reacting to the poor occupancy in its flights, Vistara, later in a statement, said that more than one-third of its total aircraft capacity was premium economy and therefore, the overall seat factor needs to be seen in this perspective. “More than one-third of our seating capacity is premium - a combination of Business and Premium Economy. Our load factor, therefore, has to be seen in the context of our cabin configuration which is uniquely different from other players where all or majority of the seats are in Economy,” it said. The airline has seen a remarkable improvement in its bookings, especially in economy class with many of its flights being overbooked, it claimed. PTI