Air India domestic ran with 22% flyer load

Mumbai: Air India can get into the Guiness Book of World Records: the national carrier would be the only one in the world that operated over 9,000 flights last year with less than one-fourth of its seats occupied.
The average passenger load on Air India's domestic flights was an abysmal 22.2% in 2010, according to statistics released by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation ( DGCA). Air India domestic flight means, AI-coded flights that operate between Indian cities.
The airline operated 9,366 such departures last year. For instance, in the Jeddah-Hyderabad-Mumbai leg, the Hyderabad-Mumbai flight would be the domestic operation of Air India. The 22% passenger load is only for Air India's domestic leg. Air India had an average passenger load factor of 67.9% for its international flights in 2010.
IndiGo had an average passenger load factor of 83.8%, the highest in domestic sector. A passenger load factor is the percentage of passengers carried to the number of seats offered on a particular flight.
Some of the routes on which Air India's Boeing 747s and Boeing 777s fly with one-fourth passenger loads are Hyderabad-Mumbai, Calicut-Kochi, Thiruvananthapuram-Calicut, Ahmedabad-Mumbai. "An airline seat is highly perishable, it is worse than fruits and vegetables," said a top airline official. "The moment the aircraft doors are closed, the empty seats have gone rotten and cannot be sold," he adds.
13/02/01 Manju V/Times of India

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Categories: Air India Domestic Feb 2011, Air India Feb 2011