India’s Domestic Travel Doubles in August Compared to August 2021

LONDON – According to a report released by India’s aviation regulator, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), India’s domestic air travel has effectively doubled this August in a year-on-year comparison with this month in 2021.

According to the DGCA report which was released on Friday, India’s airlines domestic passenger traffic in August this year was calculated to be over 10 million compared to approximately 6.7 million in the same month in 2021.

Calculating the annual passenger growth in 2022 – airlines carried over 77 million passengers in the calendar year up to August. This represents an overall annual increase on the corresponding calendar period for 2021.

Overall flight performance

Flight performance figures were calculated for the 4 main metro airports of Bangalore, Delhi, Hyderabad and Mumbai.

On-time scheduled flights

When considering India airlines domestic traffic measurements at the 4 main metro airports, Tata Group carriers took out the top three rankings for on-time performance of scheduled services.

Air Asia India took out the top slot, turning in a figure of 93% of scheduled flights operating on-time. Vistara was a close second with 91% on-time and Air India rounded out the top three at 88%.

A glance at current performance figures as at the date of writing shows that on-time performance across the carriers remains roughly the same, with the Tata Group airlines continuing to occupy the top three performance slots.

On-time flight performance chart for India airlines domestic traffic.

Passenger Load Factor

Being the off-peak period, the passenger load factors across the Indian carriers were fairly low generally, with major carriers showing values between 65-85%.

For August, SpiceJet topped the field with a passenger load factor percentage of 84.6%. They were followed by Vistara with 84.4% and Go First with 81.6%. Statistics across the main carriers as at today’s date show an average 80% passenger load factor.

Flight cancellations

With respect to the second performance parameter of flight cancellations, Indian carriers fared well in the domestic/regional market. Overall, the cancellation figure for scheduled domestic services was 0.84% for the month of August.

Customer satisfaction

With respect to customer satisfaction, the two main passenger complaints were issues with flights and problems with obtaining refunds for flight cancellation.

Considering the breakdown for domestic/regional services for August 2022, the figures are as follows:

IndiGo, India’s leading carrier and the world’s largest low-cost carrier, claims a healthy market share of 57.70%. Vistara, a full-service carrier accounts for 9.70% market share, followed in third position by ultra-low-cost carrier Go First with 8.60% market share.

Demand for domestic and international travel remains buoyant for the Indian aviation sector, and further improvements on figures is likely in coming months.

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