Airlines increases summer capacity by over 15%

Domestic airlines will operate over 17,170 flights every week during the on-going summer schedule, an increase of 15.5 per cent compared to the year-ago period. The number of departures per week in the 2016 summer schedule were 14,869.

As per the official data, 13 domestic airlines of the total 15 submitted their flight schedule for the March-October period this year. The carriers who did not file their summer schedule flight plans are newly launched Zoom Air and grounded carrier Air Pegasus, according to the data.

Indian Airlines summer schedule commences from the last Saturday of March and goes up to the last Friday of October every year.

As per the data, budget carrier AirAsia India and full service Vistara airlines have increased their services by nearly 80 per cent during the summer schedule. While Vistara will operate 600 flights during the summer schedule as compared to 334 flights during the last summer, AirAsia India has increased the number of its flights to 502 as against 280 during the last summer, it said. Regional player TrueJet, which is one among the five air operators chosen to kick-start Government regional connectivity scheme UDAN, will have 238 flights this summer, up from 112 last year while Air India's regional arm Alliance Air will have 368 flights as against 234 flights operated during the last summer. Gurgaonbased IndiGo will have 6,432 flights in the current summer schedule compared to 5,323 flights a year-ago.

The two other budget carriers --GoAir and SpiceJet -have also increased the services, 1,257 flights and 2,286 flights, respectively, per week under their 2017 summer schedule. Stateowned Air India has increased the number of flights by 5.7 per cent to 1,788 while Jet Airways will operate 3,040 flights per week as against 3,100 flights operated by the airline in the March-October period of last year.