Domestic Air Traffic Rises To 1.49 Crore In December, Up 4.2% From November

India's domestic air traffic continued to rise in December, as aviation demand remained steady during the peak winter travelling season.

The overall domestic air traffic stood at 1.49 crore during the month, higher by 4.2% as compared to 1.43 crore in November 2024, as per the data released the Directorate General of Civil Aviation on Wednesday.

In a year-on-year comparison, the air traffic last month increased by 8.19% as against 1.38 crore in December 2023.

For the entire calendar year of 2024, India's domestic air traffic rose 6% to 16.13 crore, as compared to 15.2 crore in 2023, according to the data.

Airlines are expanding their fleet as well as networks to meet the rising air travel demand in the country, which is one of the world's fastest-growing civil aviation markets.

In December, the market share of IndiGo stood at 64.4% while that of Air India touched 26.4%. Akasa Air and SpiceJet had a share of 4.6% and 3.3%, respectively.

The on-time performance took a beating in December. IndiGo had the highest OTP of 73.4%, followed by Air India (67.6%), Akasa Air (62.7%), SpiceJet (61.5%) and Alliance Air (55.6%).

The figures are computed for four metro airports -- Delhi, Bangalore, Mumbai and Hyderabad.

The overall flight cancellation rate of the scheduled domestic carriers stood at 1.07 per cent in December last year.

Flight cancellations affected 67,622 passengers and airlines spent Rs 1.26 crore towards compensation and facilities in this regard. The data also showed that 2,79,985 passengers were impacted due to flight delays and airlines shelled out Rs 3.78 crore towards facilitation in December.

During the same period, as many as 2,147 passengers were denied boarding and airlines spent Rs 1.76 crore towards compensation and facilities.

With PTI inputs