Domestic airlines flew 117.17 million passengers during 2017, surpassing the 100-million mark for the first time. This is a growth of 17.3% from 99.88 million domestic flyers in 2016, according to the data released by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation(DGCA).
IndiGo continued to dominate the industry with a market share of 39.6% at the end of the year, followed by Jet Airways (15.4%), Air India (13.3%) and SpiceJet (13.2%).
In December, domestic air passenger count grew by about 17.7% with Indian carriers flying 11.2 million during the month. SpiceJet had the highest load factor with 95.6% of its seats filled up in December 2017, followed by GoAir (92%) and IndiGo (90.8%). All remaining airlines had a load factor of above 80%, except Air Deccan and Trujet.
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‘Load factor rises’
“The passenger load factor in the month of December 2017 has shown an increasing trend compared to the previous month [November 2017], primarily due to the ongoing tourist season,” the DGCA said in its report.
As per the data, a total of 681 passenger related complaints were received by scheduled domestic airlines in December. The number of complaints per 10,000 passengers carried for the month of December 2017 was highest for Air India (domestic) at 1.8, followed by Jet Airways and Jetlite at 1.2, Trujet (0.7), GoAir (0.4), AirAsia (0.3), IndiGo (0.2), SpiceJet (0.2) and Vistara (0.1).
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Delays, cancellations
A total of 2,41,117 passengers were impacted by delays of more than 2 hours in December 2017, leading to airlines spending ₹184.25 lakh towards providing affected flyers with facilities, including refund and refreshments.
About 18,366 passengers were impacted due to cancellation of flights during the last month with airlines spending ₹63.43 lakh on compensation and facilities, while 2,879 passengers were denied boarding and ₹170.36 lakh were spent by airlines on compensation.