Domestic passenger traffic continued to soar with airlines carrying 39.03 lakh fliers in March this year, up 23.51% from the same month last year when they had flown 31.60 lakh passengers.
In the first quarter too, 17.13% more passengers took to the sky this year at 118.53 lakh against 98.22 lakh in the first three months - January to March - of 2009.
Air traffic was up month-on-month, too, as it climbed 1.035% in that period from 38.63 passengers in February.
Industry experts said numbers are up on revival of economic activity in many and corporate houses loosening their purse string for business travel.
“It is not just corporate houses that have started spending on air travel but even leisure travel has picked up lately with confidence in the economic growth returning,” said an analyst with local broking house, who did not want to be named.
He believes the upswing in air travel is sustainable expects it to pick up further in the current month when peak season sets.
However, even domestic carriers flew more people their load factor in March this year compared to February. It slipped to an average of low 70 from high 70.
A senior executive of a budget airline said since March is the worst month of the year, this was not surprising. He said, last month’s load factor was relatively better compared to the same month last year.
In March 2009, airlines had recorded an average of high 60 load factor.
In terms of market share, all carriers lost marginally except Kingfisher Airlines and Air India (domestic) in March compared to February.
The Vijay Mallya-owned carrier’s share moved up to 23% from 22.7% while Air India’s to 17.8% from 17.2%.
Naresh Goyal-owned Jet Airways, along its subsidiary JetLite that offer budget services, maintained market dominance with 26%. Jet’s share was down by 10 basis points (bps) from 26.10% in February.
IndiGo, SpiceJet, GoAir and Paramount Airways market pie shrunk to 14.70%, 11.9%, 5.3% and 1.3% from 14.90%, 12.2%, 5.5% and 1.8%.
The cancellation rate of airlines in March was 1.9% with SpiceJet registering the lowest cancellation at 0.1% and Paramount the highest at 6.9%.
These were mostly for commercial reasons, which accounted for 42.5% of total number of cancellation.
Around 28.8% of cancellations were due to technical reason, 18.4% for operational reason, 1.9% due to weather condition and 8.4% for other reasons.
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