On month-on-month basis, the climb in air passenger traffic was a whopping 34.8% as local carriers ferried 11.74 lakh more passengers in December at 44.47 lakh passengers.
Domestic air passenger numbers continued to soar in December, ending the year with an annual growth of 7.86% as airlines collectively flew 445.13 lakh fliers in 2009 against 412.71 fliers in 2008, according to the statistics put by the Ministry of Civil Aviation on Wednesday.
On month-on-month basis, the climb in air passenger traffic was a whopping 34.8% as local carriers ferried 11.74 lakh more passengers in December at 44.47 lakh passengers compared to 33.73 lakh in November.
Amongst the domestic airlines, passengers carried by Naresh Goyal-owned airlines - Jet Airways and JetLite - was the highest at 111.23 lakh in 2009, followed by Kingfisher Airlines, which carried 104.83 lakh passengers. Air India carried 76.82 lakh, IndiGo 61.03 lakh, SpiceJet 54.46 lakh, GoAir 20.61 lakh and Paramount Airways 8.3 lakh.
For the whole year, Jet and JetLite cornered the highest market share of 25.4%. Trailing it were Kingfisher at 23.9%, Air India at 17.5%, IndiGo at 13.9%, SpiceJet at 12.4%, GoAir at 4.7% and Paramount at 1.9%.
In December too, Jet and JetLite lead with 26.2% market share followed by Kingfisher with 20.8%, Air India with 18.3%, IndiGo with 15.2%, SpiceJet with 12.9%, GoAir with 5.3% and Paramount with 1.4%.
Last month, almost all planes were filled up more than three-fourth of their capacity with airlines registering loads factors over 75%. IndiGo had the highest load factor at 90%, Paramount at 88.7%. SpiceJet’s seat factor was 88%, GoAir 86.1%, JetLite 81.6%, Kingfisher 80.2%, Air India 79.7% and Jet 78.2%.
A senior executive with Jet Airways said that fall in the crude prices has been a major contributor for rise in travel.
Mahantesh Sabarad, senior analyst, Centrum Broking, said, “This year too, fuel prices will be a determinant (of air travel trends). Buoyancy in the economy has also helped in recovery of air travel and we will see a near-stability in fare prices, too.”
Significantly, the recent rise in air passenger traffic has come amidst higher fares, indicating that demand was price-inelastic.
The turnaround in air travel in the domestic market started in second half of this year. The first half had seen a continuous decline in passengers due to general economic slowdown, which had reduced demand.
In terms of cancellation, GoAir had the lowest rate at 0.5% while JetLite had the highest at 3.2% last month. The cancellation rate of SpiceJet and IndiGo were 0.6%, Air India’s 1.7% while that of Kingfisher and Jet was 2.1%. Close to 40% of these cancellations were due to commercial reasons, 36% owing to technical glitches and 23.9% due to weather conditions.
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