Domestic air traffic down 40% in Jan as Covid clouds darken

MUMBAI: India's domestic air passenger traffic declined around 40% to 77.34 lakh in January 2021 over the year-ago period as the pandemic continues to hit air travel demand, as per the monthly traffic data released by the aviation regulator, DGCA.

The total number of passengers flown by the Indian carriers on domestic routes in January 2020 was 1.27 crore. The passenger load factor, a measure to assess how much of an airline's passenger carrying capacity has been utilised, during the previous month has shown a declining trend compared to December primarily due to the tourist season, the DGCA said.

The load factor of six major domestic airlines--IndiGo, SpiceJet, Air India, GoAir, Vistara and AirAsia India -- stood between 70% and 64.9% in January, as per data.

"Passengers carried by domestic airlines during January 2021 were 77.34 lakh against 127.83 lakh during the corresponding period of previous year, thereby registering annual growth of -39.60%," it said.

Budget carrier IndiGo flew the most number of passengers at 42.03 lakh with a market share of 54.30% followed by rival carrier Vistara which carried 9.92 lakh passengers during the month, cornering 12.8% share of the total domestic traffic in the month.

IndiGo also recorded the highest on-time perfor mance during the month with on an average 93.7% of its flights from four metro airports --Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru and Hyderabad --departing/arriving on time.