Domestic air travelers grew 2.42% YoY in April, slowest in 13 months: DGCA – The Statesman

The number of domestic air travelers in India grew 2.42 per cent year-on-year (Y-o-Y) in April, reaching 132 million, according to the data released by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) on Tuesday.

Notably, it is the slowest Y-o-Y growth in domestic air passenger traffic in at least 13 months.

However, domestic air traffic fell very slightly in April when compared with March 2024’s reading which stood at 133.68 lakh passengers.

The slow growth can be attributed to multiple factors. One of the key airlines, IndiGo, grounded over 70 planes due to issues with Pratt and Whitney (PW) engines.

On the other hand, amid a cash crunch, SpiceJet consolidated its domestic services. Vistara canceled over 2 per cent of its flights in April as pilots went on sick leave over salary disputes.

As per the DGCA data, Akasa Air was the most punctual airline operating in India for the second straight month in a row after overtaking AIX Connect in March.

The airlines turned in an on-time performance of 89.2 per cent at the four metro airports: New Delhi, Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Mumbai. AIX Connect and Vistara were second and third, followed by IndiGo.

In terms of domestic passengers, Vistara carried 1.218 million domestic passengers in April, a 5.14 per cent decline month-on-month. SpiceJet carried 6.17 million domestic passengers, marking a 12.1 per cent M-o-M drop.

Vistara also canceled 2.4 per cent of its scheduled flights in April, the highest among all major carriers, according to the DGCA data.

Air India was the only major carrier that had M-o-M growth in its domestic traffic with 18.8 million domestic passengers, marking a growth of 7.61per cent.

The DGCA data also highlighted the cancellation rates of the airlines. In April 2024, the overall cancellation rate of scheduled domestic airlines stood at 0.80 per cent, around 17 basis points higher than the 0.63 per cent in March but lower than the 0.9 per cent seen in February and 3.67 per cent seen in January.

Flybig, a regional airline based in Gurugram (Haryana), recorded the highest cancellation rate of 10 per cent, while the new airline Zoom was second with a cancellation rate of 9.55 per cent.

During April 2024, a total of 774 passenger-related complaints were received by scheduled domestic airlines. The number of complaints per 10,000 passengers carried for April has been around 0.59, the data said.