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ShareBangalore: This June air traffic of domestic airlines flew high as they carried 1.98 lakh--or 5.66%--more passengers compared to the same month last year. The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) released on Monday shows the local carriers flew 36.94 lakh passengers this June as against 34.96 lakh last June.
An industry expert said the spurt in the passenger numbers was mainly due to better fares and a slight increase in the capacity. "Airlines were able to carry more passengers this June because of better fares. Also, last June many airlines had cut capacity and that had also suppressed traffic. Yields, more or less, are at the same levels as last year's," he said.
Airlines were not only able to push up year-on-year traffic but sequentially also. From March quarter to June quarter, they flew 11.16 lakh, or 11.36%, more passengers as 109.38 lakh fliers got aboard local airlines in the June quarter compared with 98.22 lakh fliers in March quarter.
Though, the passenger numbers for the first half of the current calendar year have slipped with 18.46 lakh, or 8.05%, fewer fliers taking to the sky compared to first half of last year. During that period - from January to June - only 210.99 lakh flew as against 229.45 lakh in the corresponding period of 2008.
Number of fliers in June was down compared to May too, when 2.35 lakh - or 5.98% - more passengers travelled by air. Ankur Bhatia, executive director of Amadeus, said the month-on-month bump up was because May was usually better month compared to June.
Interestingly, domestic air traffic was improving on the back of lower fares. This was working in the favour of budget carriers, which may well have overtaken full-service carriers (FSCs) in terms of market share.
One is not able to get the exact percentage of the share of no-frill airlines because Vijay Mallya, who offers both low and premium fares on his Kingfisher Airlines, does not report the figure separately.
Of the 24.4% share that he had in June, a large part could be from low fares. Kingfisher has been consistently losing market share since January. It has dropped 3.2 percentage points from 27.6% in January.
During the same period, its rival Jet Airways' share is also down to 16.6% from 17%. Paramount Airways share is down marginally to 2% from 2.1% in January. Among the FSCs, only state-owned Air India increased its share between January and June to 17.5% from 16.7%.
In the budget airline segment, SpiceJet increased share from 11.8% to 12.8%. GoAir's is also up from 2.4% to 5.4%. JetLite's share is marginal up to 7.3% from 7.2% while IndiGo's down to 13.6% from 13.7%.
In terms of on-time-performance (OTP), IndiGo was the most punctual airline in June with a score of 87%,followed by Jet with an OTP of 86.4%.
