Domestic carriers flew 4.5 per cent less passengers at 1.09 crore in April, compared to 1.15 crore passengers in the same period last year
The Directorate-General of Civil Aviation, which released the data on Wednesday, said passenger load factor in April showed a decreasing trend as compared to the previous month on various sectors due to the end of the vacation period.
It is after over 50 months of double-digit growth that the domestic aviation industry has shown a drop in the number of passengers flown.
Incidentally in March this year the domestic industry reported a growth of just 0.4 per cent as compared to the same period previously. During April, IndiGo maintained the number 1 position among all domestic airlines having flown 54.81 lakh passengers, followed by Air India at 15.23 lakh, and SpiceJet (14.41 lakh).
GoAir flew 11.90 lakh passengers, AirAsia carried 6.78 lakh passengers and Vistara flew 5.17 lakh passengers.
Jet Airways, which temporarily ceased operations on April 17, carried about 86,000 passengers while JetLite flew 17,000 passengers during the month.
SpiceJet, reported the highest Passenger Load Factor (PLF) of 93.7 per cent among the domestic airlines in April followed by Go Air (90.8 per cent), IndiGo (87.8 per cent), Vistara (84.6 per cent) and AirAsia (84.4 per cent).
Passenger load factor shows how many of the total seats on offer by each airline are getting filled.
GoAir reported the best on-time performance (OTP) at 96.3 per cent followed by AirAsia (93 per cent) and Vistara (92.8 per cent) at the four metro airports in Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Bengaluru.
The industry paid over ₹3.51 crore to close to 2.6 lakh passengers affected by cancellations, delays and those who were denied boarding.
This includes paying over ₹1.97 crore for providing facilities to over 2.3 lakh passengers who were affected by delays. In addition, the industry also paid 1.01 crore towards providing facilities and compensation to 2,300 passengers who were denied boarding by the airlines.
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