Indian airlines carried 1.31 crore passengers in August, an increase of 5.7 per cent compared to the year-ago period, according to official data released on Friday. In August 2023, carriers had flown 1.24 crore domestic passengers while in July this year, the count stood at 1.29 crore. The report released by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) showed that last month, flight delays impacted 1,79,744 passengers with airlines shelling out around INR 2.44 crore towards facilitation.
As many as 38,599 passengers were affected by flight cancellations and carriers spent about INR 1.14 crore for compensation and facilities. “The overall cancellation rate of scheduled domestic airlines for the month of August 2024 has been 0.83 per cent,” the report said. A total of 728 passengers were denied boarding and the amount spent towards compensation and facilities in this regard was INR 77.96 lakh.
“Passengers carried by domestic airlines during January-August 2024 were 1,054.66 lakh as against 1,006.16 lakh during the corresponding period of the previous year thereby registering an annual growth of 4.82 per cent and monthly growth of 5.70 per cent,” the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) said in its report.
In terms of On Time Performance (OTP), Akasa Air was on top at 71.2 per cent in August, followed by Vistara (68.6 per cent) and AIX Connect (66.8 per cent). Both IndiGo and Air India’s OTP stood at 66 per cent in August while that of Alliance Air and SpiceJet was at 55.3 per cent and 31 per cent, respectively.
Air India, owned by Tata Group, reduced its losses by 60 per cent to INR 4,444.10 crore in FY24. The airline’s turnover increased by 23.69 per cent to INR 38,812 crore. The group is merging AirAsia India with Air India Express and Vistara with Air India. Air India recorded its highest annual operating revenues of INR 51,365 crore.
OTP has been computed for four metro airports – Bengaluru, Delhi, Hyderabad, and Mumbai. SpiceJet, which continues to grapple with multiple headwinds and is also now under enhanced surveillance of DGCA, saw its domestic market share drop to 2.3 per cent in August from 3.1 per cent in July. In August, IndiGo’s market share rose to 62.4 per cent and that of Air India climbed to 14.7 per cent. While Vistara also saw its market share increase to 10.3 per cent on a month-on-month basis, the share of AIX Connect and Akasa Air declined to 4.4 per cent and 4.5 per cent, respectively.
Alliance Air’s market share in August stood unchanged at 0.9 per cent. A total of 1,031 passenger-related complaints were received by the scheduled domestic airlines last month. The number of complaints per 10,000 passengers carried for August 2024 was around 0.79, the DGCA said.
