India's domestic airlines carried 11.39 million passengers during September 2018, up 19 percent for the corresponding month of 2017, with India’s largest airline IndiGo maintaining its significant lead over other domestic carriers.
In the January-September 2018, the domestic carriers carried 102.7 million passengers, registering a 21 percent growth from the corresponding period of previous year, according to data released by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA).
According to the DGCA data, SpiceJet continued to record the highest passenger load factor (PLF) at 93.2 percent during September 2018, followed by GoAir at 90.6 percent. The PLF for Air India stood at 81.1 percent.
The 12 domestic airlines operational during the month reported a lower overall cancellation rate of 1.07 percent for the month, as compared to 2.27 percent in the previous month.
Up to 67 percent of the cancellations were attributed under ‘miscellaneous’ reasons. 16 percent of cancellations were due to technical reasons, while bad weather conditions caused around 10 percent of the flight cancellations last month.
Vistara reported the lowest cancellation rate at 0.06 percent. IndiGo had reported a sharp increase in cancellation rate to 2.52 percent in August 2018, reduced its cancellation rate to 0.23 last month.
All domestic carriers put together received 669 complaints in September, which translates into 0.59 complaints per 10,000 passengers carried during the month.
Customer service related issues were the major reasons behind these passenger complaints. Up to 27.5 percent of passenger complaints were related to poor customer services, followed by 26 percent of complaints related to baggage related issues.
GoAir was the most punctual airline during September with an on-time performance rate of 90.4 percent for four metro airports – New Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru and Hyderabad. GoAir was followed by SpiceJet at 89.1 percent and Indigo at 87.6 percent.
IndiGo recorded the highest market share during the month by carrying 43.2 percent of all passengers carried. IndiGo is followed by Jet Airways (including JetLite) (15.8 percent), SpiceJet (12 percent) and Air India (11.8 percent).
First Published: Oct 24, 2018 1:06 PM IST
