With the economy improving domestic air travel has increased significantly. In April 41.9 lakh people took to air travel which is 24.7% higher than last year April figures of 33.6 lakh. The number of people travelled by flight in April surpassed the pre-slowdown April 2008’s figure of 37.8 lakh. Since travel season starts from April, the industry is expecting enormous growth in the next couple of months. LCC’s dominate Indian skies, thanks to the economic slowdown which witnessed even corporate using budget flights. Jet and kingfisher also have majority of their flights in LCC.
According to Kapil Kaul, India head of the Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation (CAPA) said, “Today almost 70% of all domestic flights are budget ones. Full service domestic service will further find its share falling as biggest LCCs like IndiGo and SpiceJet will induct more planes this year. Domestic and even regional international travel (to neighboring countries) will be dominated only by this model.” Air India currently does not have a domestic LCC and witness lowest occupancy of 73% in April. With LCC’s dominating the industry, Air India will have no option but to introduce domestic LCC’s. As far as the market share is concerned, Jet Airways enjoys 26% share, followed by Kingfisher with 21.4%. The major contributor for this increase in air travel is economic growth, relaxation on curbs on air travel by government and corporate sector.
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