Buoyed by the summer holiday season and the continuing rise in the Indian economy, domestic passenger traffic rose by almost 20% to 3.93 million in May from 3.315 million passengers in April.
There was no significant change in the market shares of the various airlines, but the low cost carriers IndiGo, SpiceJet, Go Air and JetLite have continued increasing their share at the expense of the legacy carriers, especially Jet Airways and Kingfisher Airlines. Go Air has shown good growth with the induction of its new Airbus A320 VT-WAJ, and niche carrier Paramount Airways has expanded its flights to Kolkata.
Passenger load factors (Revenue Passenger Kilometres as a percentage of Available Seat Kilometres) are still soft on the three legacy carriers.
For the first time the Ministry of Civil Aviation has released figures for on time departure performance. A flight is considered on time if it departs within 15 minutes of its schedule.
Paramount Airways, IndiGo and Jet Airways lead the charts. Despite competitive fares the effects of Jet Airway’s low cost subsidiary JetLite’s low punctuality reflects in its poor load factors evidenced in the chart above.