THE winter holiday season rush when the Indian diaspora also chooses to visit the home country has brought a sharp increase in the earnings of commercial airlines.
With most flights going full, airfares are up by about 20 per cent and the load factor has improved from 60 per cent earlier to around 85 per cent for major airlines such as Air India and Jet Airways.
Air India executive director Jeetendra Bhargava said both the domestic and international flights of the government- owned carrier are fully booked and earnings have increased.
“ Air traffic has been on the rise since October this year and most flights are full. On the international routes, both incoming and outgoing flights are packed on all sectors,” he added.
While these are traditionally the busy months, the numbers this year are far better compared to last year, he said.
Bhargava said Air India was adding more flights to the Goa and Port Blair sector to cater to the increased holiday rush.
“ However, we are still not back to the boom time figures of 2007,” he added.
Bhargava said this is the time of the year when Indians living abroad visit the country and most marriages are also fixed arrive here they also travel a lot within the country to meet relatives and visit tourist hotspots.
This adds to the numbers of regular air travellers in the country, he added.
A senior Jet Airways official also said the airline was operating at an over 80 per cent load factor and per ticket earnings were up.
However, airfares are still low due to the fierce competition and commercial airlines are still piling up losses, he added.
Meanwhile, the public sector oil companies announced a 1.6 for the first fortnight of January, which is expected to bring minor relief to the cash- strapped commercial airlines to some extent.
Jet fuel accounts for as much as 35 to 40 per cent of the cost of operations of the airlines.
Prices of jet fuel are still high as they had been increased by 2.4 per cent last month. After crashing in the wake of the economic meltdown in October last year, jet fuel prices moved up again during this year. The current price of jet fuel in Delhi is Rs 38,697 per kilo litre after a Rs 696 per KL cut on Thursday.
heavy losses and are finding it difficult to pay even their fuel bills and airport charges.
Air India has piled up a loss of about Rs 5,000 crore in 2008- 09, Kingfisher Airlines is in the red and has incurred losses to the tune of Rs 1,602 crore.
Jet Airways and its low- cost subsidiary JetLite have incurred a loss of Rs 1,032 crore. Lowcost carriers SpiceJet and GoAir have incurred losses worth Rs 352.50 crore and Rs 22.5 crore, respectively.
|
|
