Air India crashes to fifth due to 18% cancellations

Almost one in five flights of Air India was cancelled in May when some of its pilots went on a 10-day strike. Low-cost carrier IndiGo did not report a single cancellation during the month and all the remaining five airlines also reported cancellations under a percent.

Though the overall cancellation rate was 3.4%, Air India’s 18% in any single month is the highest in recent memory. As per data released by the Director General of Civil Aviation, three out of four times domestic airlines cancelled flights for operational reasons — technical faults accounted for less than 5% of all cancellations.

Not just cancellations, the prolonged pilot strike also affected Air India’s market share in May and the carrier slipped to the fifth position with a 13.2% share against SpiceJet’s 14.2%. Air India was fourth position in April. In the same month IndiGo almost bridged the gap with Kingfisher Airlines with a market share of 19.9% against Kingfisher’s 20%.

Jet Airways stood at 18.5% and its low-cost arm JetLite was at 7.6%. GoAir was steady at 6.6%. During May IndiGo and JetLite were neck and neck in terms of on-time performance (OTP), at 92.3% and 92.1%, respectively.

Air India domestic was the culprit here too, with one in three flights getting delayed. SpiceJet was the second-last in this list, with one in four flights getting delayed.

This, in a month when three airlines — Jet Airways, Kingfisher Airlines and IndiGo —carried more than 10 lakh passengers each and total domestic traffic stood at 54.92 lakh air passengers versus 47.86 lakh in April.

Also, last month was the second in a row when capacity grew faster than demand for Indian carriers.

The last time this scenario was played out in September last year but in the seven following months demand growth continued to outpace supply. As per estimates by the Centre for Asia Pacific Research, domestic capacity is projected to grow 12-14% this fiscal.

“However, Air India has plans to launch its low-cost subsidiary, Air India Express, on domestic routes by October 2011, using 10 leased A320s. If the airline’s board approves this plan then domestic capacity growth will be closer to 16%.”