India’s domestic air passenger traffic grew 23.18 per cent to about 10 crore in 2016 compared with the previous year, data released by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) on Tuesday showed.
In 2016, India’s air traffic stood at 9.98 crore passengers compared to 8.19 crore in 2015 which had seen a 21 per cent growth.
“Almost one crore passengers in December and ten crore in 2016. Indian Aviation is on a roll. May we continue to have safe and vibrant skies,” Civil Aviation Minister Ashok Gajapathi Raju said on microblogging website Twitter, adding that demonetisation didn’t impact air travel with December witnessing the highest number of passengers in a month.
Low-cost airline IndiGo continued to dominate in 2016 with a 2.6 per cent increase in its market share to 39.3 per cent. In 2016, 63.8 per cent of all passengers flew using low-cost airlines, such as IndiGo, SpiceJet and GoAir, up from 59.7 per cent in 2015.
The passenger share of full-service airlines Air India, Jet Airways and GoAir declined in 2016.
SpiceJet’s passenger share rose to 12.7 per cent from 11.6 per cent a year ago. New airlines also saw a rise in their market share with Vistara carrying 2.5 per cent of the total passengers and AirAsia 2.4 per cent.
Civil aviation secretary R.N. Choubey had told The Hindu last year that India has 35 crore middle-class citizens but the number of tickets sold was only eight crore. The government expects the number of tickets sold to go up to 30 crore by 2022, he said.
A dip in aviation turbine fuel prices by eight per cent on an average in 2016 allowed airlines to offer fares that were lower by about 14 per cent. Aviation turbine fuel cost contributes about 40 per cent of the total cost of the operations of airlines.
