Passenger traffic on domestic routes in January increased by 95.7% year on year

On a monthly basis, air traffic fell by almost 1.52%. In terms of passenger load factor, all airlines saw a month-on-month decline.

Air traffic by national airlines increased by 95.72% in January 2023, with 12.542 million passengers carried, compared to 6.408 million in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, however, air traffic fell by almost 1.52%. In terms of the passenger load factor, all airlines saw a month-on-month decline.

In December 2022, 12.735 lakh passengers were transported on domestic routes.

According to the latest figures from the DGCA, Indigo’s Passenger Load Factor (PLF) stood at 82% in January 2023, compared to 87.5% the previous month. Air India’s PLF was 87.5% compared to 89.3% in December last year. SpiceJet’s PLF also fell to 91% from 92.7% the previous month.

Meanwhile, AirAsia and Vistara, other airlines backed by Air India’s parent company, reported load factors of 87% and 89.4% respectively in January 2023, down from 89.8% and 89 .4% in December 2022. 91.9%.

New entrant Akasa Air also saw its PLF drop to 82.8% in the month under review, from 83.8% in December. Like other airlines, Go First’s PLF was 90.9%, down from 92.6% the previous month.

In addition, data shows that the overall domestic scheduled flight cancellation rate in January 2023 is 1.41%. That’s up from a cancellation rate of 0.79% in December last year.

In January this year, among the many reasons for cancellation, again accounted for the largest proportion, reaching 86.5%, followed by business and technical issues, accounting for 5.8% and 4.8% respectively. Various reasons accounted for 2.3%.

Domestic scheduled airlines also received a total of 418 passenger-related complaints. In January 2023, the number of complaints per 10,000 transport passengers is around 0.33.

The DGCA also highlighted the on-time performance (OTP) of scheduled domestic airlines at four metropolitan airports viz. Bangalore, Delhi, Hyderabad and Mumbai. Of the four cities, Indigo recorded the highest on-time performance at 84.6%, followed by Akasa Air at 76.9%, Vistara at 76.6% and Air India at 75.7%. The OTPs for Air Asia, SpiceJet and Go First were 61.1%, 58.9% and 50.7% respectively.