September air passenger traffic up 23 pc: DGCA

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SME Times News Bureau | 20 Oct, 2016
Domestic air passenger traffic increased by 23.46 percent during September to 82.30 lakh, official data showed on Wednesday.

The domestic passenger traffic during the corresponding month of last year stood at 66.66 lakh.

In August, the passenger traffic rose by 23.98 percent to 83.81 lakh from 67.60 lakh in the corresponding month of last year.

According to the data furnished by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), passenger traffic during January-September period grew by 23.17 percent.

"Passengers carried by domestic airlines during January-September 2016 were 726.98 lakh as against 590.21 lakh during the corresponding period of previous year thereby registering a growth of 23.17 percent," the DGCA said in its statistical analysis for the last month.

Commenting on the latest data, Civil Aviation Minister P. Ashok Gajapathi Raju said in a tweet: "Another month of record growth for Indian aviation. Maintains its top rank with 23.4% growth in Sep 2016."

The data showed that low-cost carrier (LCC) SpiceJet had the highest passenger load factor (PLF) during the month under review at over 93.5 percent.

The LCC was followed by budget passenger carriers -- GoAir (89.4) and AirAsia India (82.8).

"The passenger load factor in the month of Sept 2016 has almost remained constant compared to previous month primarily due to the end of tourist season," the DGCA said.

The data showed that in terms of on-time performance -- Vistara led the industry with 89.6 percent punctuality rate at four major airports of Bengaluru, Delhi, Hyderabad and Mumbai.

It was followed by SpiceJet (88.8) and IndiGo (87.7), Jet Airways and JetLite (82.1) and Air India (76.2).

Meanwhile, Air Carnival had the highest number of cancellations at 21.88 percent followed by Trujet (7.75) and Air India (0.93).

"The overall cancellation rate of scheduled domestic airlines for the month of Sept 2016 has been 0.42%," the aviation regulator said.

According to the data, a total of 728 passenger related complaints had been received last month.

Budget passenger carrier IndiGo achieved the highest market share in the month under review at 40 percent followed by Jet Airways (16.2), Air India (14.7), SpiceJet (12.5), GoAir (8.3) and JetLite (2.4).

Vistara reported a market share of 2.5 percent, followed by AirAsia India (2.3), Air Costa (0.6) and Trujet (0.4).