Riding high on the back of consistently low fuel prices and additional seasonal demand, with the onset of the vacation season, domestic air-traffic rose by an impressive 20.81 percent in June as compared to the previous year. Interestingly, Vistara managed to doubled its market share to 2.8 percent in June over the corresponding month last year. Its market share grew from 1.3 percent in June 2015 to 2.8 percent, as it has been steadily inducting new aircrafts in its fleet. As per the data put forth by the DGCA, carriers flew 7.9 million passengers against 6.6 million passengers in June 2015 while domestic carriers registered a year-on-year growth of 22.52 percent in the first five months of 2016, flying 47.5 million passengers.
Jet Airways and JetLite, combined, saw their market share slip two percentage points, settling at 19.1 percent. Vistara aside, market share of Air India, AirAsia India and SpiceJet have all shown a northward tick on a year-on-year basis. Go Air and IndiGo saw their market share come down – IndiGo had a market share of 38.4 percent in June 2015 which came down to 37.9 percent. However, it is important to note that IndiGo’s passenger traffic in absolute terms grew to three million in June – which was a rise of 19 percent growth on year-on-year terms. Jet Airways, too, saw a small increment in traffic in absolute terms, with 8.9 percent hike, taking the total figure past 1.5 million passengers.
Given that the government has been focussing on strengthening regional connectivity by creating a dedicated airline for the Northeast, and constructing new aviation hubs to disperse traffic into the hinterland, aviation experts expect domestic traffic to remain robust in the next quarter, as well.
