News
Indian domestic passenger numbers up 20% in 2015
May 27th 2016
The Indian aviation industry has reason to cheer after the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) this week said local carriers carried 81.09 million domestic passengers in 2015, 20.34% more than the previous year. Read More »
The DGCA also said that passenger numbers for the first four months of the current accounting period grew 23% year-on-year. At this rate it expected 100 million people to take airline journey before year end.
In April, IndiGo Airlines consolidated its dominance by improving its market share to 38.7%. Jet Airways maintained its second at 15.9%, although its share dropped, followed by flag carrier, Air India (+0.4% to 15.1%), SpiceJet (+0.1% to 12.9%) and GoAir (+0.2% to 8.5%). Air Costa and Vistara saw a modest improvement, while AirAsia India's share declined in April. SpiceJet led the pack by filling 93.2% of its seats in April, followed by Go Air (87.8%), IndiGo (85.8%) and Air India (78.9%).
The Indian carriers said the vast majority of passengers continued booking the lowest fare brackets, which has a negative effect on yields.
Air India this week became the last carrier to settle in the long-standing U.S. Air Cargo Shipping Services Litigation suit. The Mumbai-based flag carrier agreed to pay $12.5 million in an out of court settlement. Earlier this month, Air New Zealand said it would settle for $35 million, not because it was guilty of the anti-trust charges, the carrier said, but because “the potential for an unexpected verdict was not an acceptable commercial risk” it wanted to carry.
Air India also said this week that it expected to post an operating profit of eight crore rupees ($1.7 million) for the 2015-2016 fiscal yeaer, which would be its first profit since it merged with Indian Airlines in 2007-2008.
