Higher airfares stalled the growth in domestic aviation traffic in November to a four-year low of 11.03%, according to DGCA data.
The domestic aviation market has seen the fastest growth globally and registered double digit growth in the past 51 months since September 2014.
Calendar years 2015, 2016 and 2017 have seen an average growth of 20.43%, 23% and 17.3% respectively.
The growth rates tumbled by more than 2% since October, which witnessed 13.3% growth.
Domestic airlines ferried 1.16 crore passengers last month, up from 1.04 crore in November 2017.
“The import duty of 5% on jet fuel led to an increase in airfares and hit demand from passengers.
“The government’s decision in September has had a catastrophic impact and was ill-timed as the industry was already grappling with an increase in oil prices and the tumbling rupee,” said Mark Martin, founder and CEO, Martin Consulting.
Capacity rationalisation
CAPA’s Kapil Kaul, too, attributed the drop in growth rate to an in increase in airfares as well as capacity rationalisation by Jet Airways.
The cash-strapped airline had cancelled flights to several of its destinations and reduced frequency and capacity on several of the routes in continued to operate. Despite the challenges in the industry, IndiGo cornered 43% of the market share.
It was followed by Jet Airways (12.8%), SpiceJet (12.5%), Air India (12.2%) and GoAir (8.8%).
On-time performance
GoAir topped the rankings in terms of on-time performance or punctuality of flights with 87% of its flights departing on time. It was followed by Vistara (86.0%), IndiGo (79.2%), SpiceJet (78.3%), Jet Airways (76.6%) and Air India at the bottom (64.0%).
As far as seat occupancy or passenger load factor on various airlines was concerned, SpiceJet retained its top spot with 91.1% of its aircraft seat inventory being sold.
SpiceJet was followed by GoAir (87.6%), AirAsia (86.5%), IndiGo (84.9%), Jet Airways (82.1%) and Air India (78.6%), data showed.
