Air travel takes off again, up 20%

The booming economy has made travel a major spending option for Indians once again. According to agents, the bookings on outbound travel have increased in the range of 15 to 20%.

Even domestic travel has seen a year-on-year increase of 20%
in November.

Indians are back to spending more on travel and exploring the globe like they used to before the economic slowdown of 2008. An increasing number of Indians are going abroad to celebrate Christmas and bring in the New Year.

“We have seen an upward swing in bookings on outbound travel in the range of 15% to 20%,” said Rajesh Rateria, chairman, Travel Agents Association of India (TAAI). “People who were earlier taking one holiday a year are now taking two thanks to more spending power,” he said.

The frequent Indian holidayers, who had confined themselves to economical destinations in the Middle-East and the Gulf, are now opting for new destinations like Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, Helsinki (Finland), etc.

“The booming economy, more spending power, lucrative destinations and travel deals are prodding Indians
to go for holidays abroad,” he said.

Even domestic travel has become a hotbed of activity, showing an upswing of 20% between January and November. According to the figures released by the ministry of civil aviation, the number of passengers ferried by domestic airlines in this period was 468 lakh, compared to 393 lakh in the same period last year.

For domestic travel, Jet Airways and Jetlite are the preferred airline in November.

The airline continued to lead the market share with 26.2%, followed by Kingfisher Airlines (KFA) with 19.1% and Indigo with 17.2% and NACIL (I) with 17.1%.

The overall cancellation rate of scheduled domestic airlines for November has been 1.5%. Low cost carriers (LCC) had the lowest cancellation rate with 0.4% while NACIL (I) recorded 2.5%.

The major reasons attributed for cancellations were technical (28.1%), miscellaneous (26.6%), commercial (19.4%) and weather (17.5%).

During November, 1,402 passenger complaints were received by the scheduled domestic airlines. The number of complaints per 10,000 passengers carried in November has been 3.

The highest average of complaints was against Goair with 4.9 complaints per 10,000 passengers and the least number of complaints were against Kingfisher, with an average of 1.9 per 10,000 passengers carried.

The reasons for the complaints included, others (56%), lost baggage (26%), staff misbehaviour (10.2%), refund (5.1%) and IT (2.7%).