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Our Bureau

New Delhi, Oct. 20 The slowdown in the domestic aviation industry continues to affect almost all the airlines.

The latest data released by the Directorate-General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) shows that 10 domestic scheduled airlines reported a drop of 19 per cent in the number of passengers carried during September this year compared with the corresponding period in the previous year.

Incidentally, this is the fourth successive month that the industry has reported a slow down after recording growth for more than a year.

During September, the industry flew 6,24,000 fewer passengers at 26.76 lakh passengers than what was carried the previous year.

Kingfisher Airlines, which flew 4.09 lakh passengers, JetLite, the 100 per cent subsidiary of Jet Airways which flew 2.39 lakh passengers, and Paramount Airways, which carried 45,000 passengers, were the only three airlines that did better this September compared with the previous year.

The biggest loser was Air Deccan, which flew 2.43 lakh fewer passengers during September followed by Indian (1.46 lakh fewer passengers) and Jet Airways (1,00,000 fewer passengers).

In the past few months, the industry has resorted to increasing fares so as to cut the losses being incurred due to rising aviation turbine fuel prices.

This, however, has led to passengers shying away from flights and taking alternative means of transportation.

To overcome the crisis and also cut costs, Jet Airways had recently entered into an alliance with Kingfisher Airlines, the scope of which includes code-sharing on both international and domestic flights, apart from looking at joint network rationalisation.

The alliance will also look at a joint fuel management strategy so as to reduce expenses, apart from working on cross-selling flight inventory.

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