There’s change in the air.

These are good times for the Indian flyer — she’s flying more and facing fewer disruptions, despite domestic air passenger growth hitting 20 per cent or more for many months now.

At the same time, fewer passengers have been affected by flight cancellations, been denied boarding, or faced long delays. Airlines report data of such incidents each month to DGCA, the regulator. In the 10 months ended April 2016, the number of passengers affected by delays of more than two hours fell 13 per cent year-on-year.

The fall was sharper in the denied boarding (25 per cent) and flights cancelled (35 per cent) categories. All carriers that contributed the most to flight disruptions showed improvement. Air India reduced the count of affected passengers by more than a third in cancellations, by about half in denied boarding, and almost a tenth in delays in the 10 months. Jet Airways cut the numbers of passengers it denied boarding by 13 per cent and its cancellation cases by more than 40 per cent. At IndiGo Airlines, the number of passengers affected by delays fell nearly 30 per cent. SpiceJet, which got a new lease of life early last year, more than halved the number of passengers affected by cancellations.

Changes in management (at Air India and SpiceJet), improved financial position, and technology and operational improvements to reduce flight disruptions appear to have had the desired effect. IndiGo, for instance, has established a centralised Operational Control Center to monitor its entire network activity real time.

Fewer affected passengers also meant that the DGCA-mandated compensation payout by airlines was lower by about 20 per cent year-on- year to ₹12.9 crore in the 10 months.

Some of the new airlines though seem to be having trouble with their flight scheduling. Air Costa and Air Pegasus, in recent months, have seen their cancellation rates shoot up to double-digits. A small fleet size at these carriers amplifies the effect of disruptions, but there were other reasons too. A spokesperson for Air Costa says, “The cancellation is due to the phasing out of E170s and replacing them with single type of aircraft (E190s). The exercise is nearly completed and the schedule is back to normal now.”

Things have improved overall, but there is still much scope for improvement. Flight cancellations, delays, and denied boarding continue to affect thousands.

Over the past 12 months, there was a nearly 1 in 100 chance that the flight you booked was cancelled, close to 12,000 passengers were denied boarding due to overbooking by airlines, and as many as 6.7 lakh passengers suffered delays of beyond two hours. Much blame lies at the door of Air India which accounted for most of the passengers affected by cancellations and delays. Market observers attribute this, in part, to problems in fleet maintenance. The airline did not respond to queries. Jet Airways scores the worst on denied boarding, accounting for 7 in 10 passengers who were “bumped off” their flights last year.

A spokesperson for the airline says, “Overbooking is an industry wide practice done for seat optimisation in anticipation of last minute cancellations by confirmed passengers. Jet Airways uses sophisticated algorithms to predict cancellation and no show pattern on specific routes and overbooks flights by a small amount accordingly.”

Market leader IndiGo is next only to Air India on the number of passengers affected by delays. A spokesperson for the airline says, “At IndiGo, with the largest market share of 38.4 per cent, the absolute numbers will seem to be higher. However, a fair comparison can be drawn based on number of complaints per 1 lakh passengers flown for every airline.” On this basis, the airline claims that its performance is not as bad as it seems. IndiGo says that the majority of the delays are caused by infrastructure constraints at airports.

Bharath Mahadevan, former aviation consultant and currently India head of Scoot Airways, agrees and thinks that the overall numbers for the sector seem par for the course. He says, “We need to evaluate the number of passengers affected versus the total number of passengers carried. Also, many factors may not be in the airlines’ control; air traffic congestion, or airport security congestion, for example.”

COMMENT NOW