Air traffic doubles to 117 mn in six years
NEW DELHI: India’s domestic air traffic nearly doubled to 117 million passengers in 2017 with 100 flights taking off every hour compared with 67 in 2011, data released by aviation regulator Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) on Tuesday showed.
India’s airlines flew 117.18 million passengers in 2017 compared with 59.87 million in 2011. They also registered an 18% growth over the 99.88 million passengers who flew in 2016.
Going forward, the feat of doubling air traffic at the same rate will be difficult, an industry analyst who did not want to be named said.
“It will take a longer time because growth will be hampered by infrastructure issues. Plus, overall costs have gone up in the past decade,” he said.
Data showed airlines like Air India, InterGlobe Aviation Pvt. Ltd-run IndiGo, SpiceJet Ltd, Jet Airways (India) Ltd and GoAir were able to fly fuller flights in 2017—flights were 86.1% full in 2017, compared with 75.5% in 2011.
Besides, the capacity deployed by airlines rose 68% during these years.
Another clear trend that has strengthened during these years is the shift to low-fare airlines.
Jet Airways group had the highest market share at about 27% in 2011, IndiGo was at about 17%, followed by Air India at 15%, Kingfisher Airlines at 14% and SpiceJet and GoAir had about 6% each.
In 2017, IndiGo had about 39.6% marketshare, Jet Airways group had 17.8%, Air India 13.3%, SpiceJet 13.2%, GoAir 8.5% and Vistara and AirAsia 3.5% and 3.7%, respectively.
Vijay Mallya’s Kingfisher Airlines and M. Thiagarajan’s Paramount Airways and Air Costa went belly up during these years.
Vistara, AirAsia India and TruJet are the new start-ups, while GR Gopinath’s Air Deccan restarted regional flights late last year.
India has close to 500 planes in service and about 800 planes on order and is set to become the third largest aviation market by 2025, overtaking the UK, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) said in a report in October.
China will be the top market, followed by the US.
Besides infrastructure woes such as the lack of flight slots and aircraft parking bays at some major airports, the analyst quoted above said that airlines would be worriedabout a rally in fuel prices.
Oil prices, which make about 30-40% of airlines’ operational costs, have shot up in the last year. “If the fuel price keeps going up we may not only see impact on pricing and therefore flight occupancy but reduced growth numbers,” he said.
Indian consumers are very price conscious. Demand drops, the analyst said, every time the one-way economy fare from Delhi to Mumbai, currently at ₹4,500-5,500, rises to ₹6,500-7,500.