India's domestic air passenger traffic nearly doubled to 1.25 crore in January: DGCA data

India's domestic air passenger traffic nearly doubled to 1.25 crore in January compared to 64.08 lakh recorded in the year-ago period, according to official data released on Monday. In January, IndiGo saw its domestic market share decline for the fifth consecutive month at 54.6 per cent. It carried 68.47 lakh passengers last month. In August last year, the carrier had a market share of 59.72 per cent.

As per the data from the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), the regulator received more complaints from the passengers of various airlines on account of flight problems, baggage issues and staff behaviour compared to December.

Air India and Vistara carried 11.55 lakh and 11.05 lakh passengers, respectively, in January, with a market share of 9.2 per cent and 8.8 per cent, respectively. During the month under review, budget carriers -- Go First and AirAsia India --transported a total of 10.53 lakh and 9.30 lakh passengers, respectively. The number of domestic passengers flown by low-cost airline SpiceJet stood at 9.14 lakh, according to DGCA.

The total number of domestic passengers flown by the Tata Group airlines -- Air India, Vistara and AirAsia India -- together stood at 32.30 lakh, accounting for around 26 per cent of the total domestic market in January 2023.

Air India and AirAsia India are fully owned by the Tata Group while Vistara is 51 per cent owned by the conglomerate and the rest is with Singapore Airlines. As part of the group's plans to consolidate its aviation business, Vistara is being merged with Air India and budget carrier AirAsia India with Air India's international low-cost arm, Air India Express.

Also, all seven domestic airlines, including Akasa Air, saw lower Passenger Load Factor (PLF) sequentially in January. PLF or seat factor is a measure of how much of an airline's passenger carrying capacity is used or average percentage of seats filled in an aircraft.

IndiGo, however, maintained its top position in On-Time Performance (OTP) in January with 84.6 per cent on an average of its flights from four key metro airports -- Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru and Hyderabad -- departing and arriving at their scheduled time.