Tourist season takeoff: October air traffic grows 19% to 70.39 lakh passengers

New Delhi: Maintaining the growth trajectory, domestic air traffic rose nearly 19 percent to 70.39 lakh passengers in October as onset of tourist season saw more number of fliers. [caption id=“attachment_2514958” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Reuters[/caption] Low cost carrier IndiGo, which recently got listed on the bourses, maintained its leadership position with a market share of 36.8 percent in October. It flew as many as 25.90 lakh passengers last month. With a load factor of 93%, rival SpiceJet saw the maximum occupancy in its planes in October while its market share stood at 12.8% during the same period. Load factor refers to seat occupancy per aircraft. Latest data from the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) showed that local carriers flew 70.39 lakh passengers last month compared to 59.25 lakh people in the same period of 2014. “The passenger load factor in the month of October 2015 has shown increasing trend compared to previous month primarily due to the onset of tourist season,” DGCA said. During October, national carrier Air India ferried 10.88 lakh passengers and its market share reached 15.5%. Jet Airways and JetLite together flew 14.95 lakh people while their individual market share stood at 18.80% and 2.60%, respectively. In October, another budget carrier GoAir transported 5.94 lakh passengers and commanded a market share of 8.4%. As per the data, start-up airlines – AirAsia and Vistara – ferried more than a lakh passengers each last month. While AirAsia carried 1.50 lakh people, Vistara flew 1.23 lakh passengers. Their market shares touched 2.15 and 1.7%, respectively. In terms of On-Time Performance (OTP), IndiGo was on the top with 89.6%, followed by SpiceJet (86.9%). Jet Airways and Jet Lite combined recorded an OTP figure of 85.3% whereas that of national carrier Air India stood at 75.5% in October. The OTP numbers have been computed on the basis of four metro airports - Bengaluru, Delhi, Hyderabad and Mumbai. Last month, a total of 727 passenger related complaints were received by 11 scheduled domestic airlines. As much as 33% of the complaints were related to flight operations. During the 2015 January-October period, local carriers flew 6.61 crore passengers. This is an increase of 20% compared to the year-ago period when the same stood at 5.51 crore passengers. PTI