Indian domestic carriers flew 1.15 crore passengers in September this year registering a 1.2 per cent growth over the 1.13 crore passengers flown in the same period previously.

Terming the latest numbers as “disappointing”, Arun Kumar, Director-General, Directorate General of Civil Aviation, said these numbers pulled down their projection which is now pegged at 4-6 per cent growth.

“The good news is that we have managed to withstand the sad exit of Jet Airways and maintained a positive growth despite three months of negative or almost flat growth. The loss in the fleet on account of Jet Airways, has largely been recovered and we expect an all time high fleet of more than 616 aircraft in the air in a month’s time from now. With some more aircraft joining our fleet by December 31, we expect a return to double digit growth in the early part of next year,” the DG said.

The latest data shows that IndiGo carried 55.59 lakh of the total passengers flown by the domestic carriers followed by SpiceJet (17 lakh); Air India (14.95 lakh); Go Air (13.27 lakh); Air Asia (7.25 lakh); and Vistara (6.64 lakh).

Highest PLF

SpiceJet, reported the highest Passenger Load Factor (PLF) of 93 per cent among the domestic airlines in September followed by Go Air (86.7 per cent), IndiGo (86.5 per cent), AirAsia (84.7 per cent), Vistara (80.3 per cent) and Air India (79 per cent). Passenger load factor shows how many of the total seats on offer by each airline are filled.

Best on-time performance

GoAir reported the best on-time performance (OTP) at 85.4 per cent followed by IndiGo (83.7 per cent), AirAsia (79.8 per cent), Vistara (78.5 per cent), SpiceJet (74.6 per cent) and Air India (53.1 per cent) at the four metro airports in Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Bengaluru.

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