Domestic ait traffic sees month-on-month increase since October

According to the January traffic report released by civil aviation regulator Directorate of Civil Aviation (DGCA) on Thursday, 7.7 million passengers flew last month to destinations across the country.

While reeling from the impact of the lockdown, domestic air travel has recorded an upward trend since October, with a month-on-month increase in the number of passengers. According to the January traffic report released by civil aviation regulator Directorate of Civil Aviation (DGCA) on Thursday, 7.7 million passengers flew last month to destinations across the country.

People wait in queue outside an airport. (HT FILE)

During the lockdown, India’s domestic passenger traffic slipped to a seven-year low in 2020. After commercial passenger flights resumed operations with restricted capacity on local routes, traffic increased from 45% between June and September last year to 80% in October 2020. DGCA’s report shows the number of fliers has progressively increased from 5.2 million in October 2020, to 6.3 million in November 2020 and 7.3 million in December 2020.

However, the impact of Covid-19 pandemic continues to be felt by domestic air travel. “Passengers carried by domestic airlines during January 2021were 7.7 million against 12.7 million during the corresponding period of previous year (January 2020), thereby registering annual growth of -39.60 per cent,” read DGCA’s report.

According to DGCA, the load factor of IndiGo, SpiceJet, GoAir, Air India, Vistara and AirAsia India was between 70% and 64.9% in January. Indigo flew the maximum number of passengers (4.2 million) followed by full-service carrier Vistara (0.9 million). IndiGo also recorded the highest on-time performance (OTP) in January with an average 93.7% of its flights from four metro airports (Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru and Hyderabad). The budget carrier’s OTP was followed by Vistara and Air Asia.

CS Subbiah, former chief executive officer or Alliance Air, said, “Domestic traffic will not be able to go back to pre-Covid levels firstly, because domestic traffic also has an international component. Many passengers land into Delhi or Mumbai, and then travel towards their destinations taking domestic flights.” Subbiah said the international component in domestic air travel accounts for around 20%. “Currently we are operating maximum 100 flights under the government’s scheme, which is way below the original international flight numbers,” he said. “Not only Air India, but also foreign carriers who have tie-ups with domestic airlines are severely affected.”

Subbiah said he didn’t anticipate the demand for air travel reaching pre-Covid levels until the latter half of this year. “It will only be around October when the vaccination drive would have reached around 40% and when international travel would have slowly resumed along with overall relaxed rules, that traffic might touch pre-Covid levels. However, yields will remain poor. They will start getting better only by 2022 summer,” he said.