As fares rose, air traffic growth slowed

Bangalore: After soaring to 30.8% in September, the pace of increase in domestic air passengers slowed in October, with the month registering a year-on-year (YoY) growth of 26.7%, data put out by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) on Thursday showed.
Industry experts said the pace of growth may have slowed down because airlines have increased fares in their bid to improve yields, or the net revenue per seat. Over the last few quarters, airline yields have been hovering at very low levels, making it difficult for them to move out of the red.
At 40.29 lakh, the number of travellers who took to the air in October was 8.49 lakh more than the number last year.
For the first ten months of calendar 2009, the number of domestic fliers grew 3.32% year on year to 360 lakh.
One of the players -- New Delhi-based regional carrier MDLR Airlines -- suspended operations in the first week of October.
State-owned Air India and Jet Airways, which had lost substantial market share in September due to pilot strikes, made up in October, with their shares jumping increasing to 18.6% and 19.8% from 17.5% and 15.8%, respectively in September.
JetLite also improved its share to 7.9% from 7.7% during the same period. All the other airlines -- Kingfisher Airlines, SpiceJet, Paramount Airways, GoAir and IndiGo -- saw their market shares dip. Interestingly, even though the market shares of SpiceJet, GoAir and IndiGo slipped in October, they flew more passengers in that month compared with September.
The industry's cancellation rate, which had deteriorated to 6.6% in September because of the pilot strikes at Air India and Jet Airways, improved in October to 1.6%. GoAir had the best cancellation rate at 0.1%.
13/11/09 Praveena Sharma/Daily News & Analysis

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Categories: Indian Aviation- In General Nov 2009