India's air passenger traffic dipped in January as compared with December's nearly three-year high, but touched January 2019 levels as demand for air travel remained strong during the month.
Traffic rose 96% year-on-year to 1.25 crore, according to the monthly data released by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation. The number was slightly higher than the traffic in January 2019.
The year-on-year growth is high as the third wave of Covid-19 curbed air travel last year.
However, the number was lower than the traffic in January 2020, when 1.28 crore people took to the skies, two months before it came to a standstill due to pandemic restrictions.
IndiGo Retains Top Spot
IndiGo, which is operated by InterGlobe Aviation Ltd., retained the top spot with a market share of 54.6% in January. But, the airline's market share dropped 50 basis points from December, making it the sixth consecutive month when its market share has either remained flat or declined.
Air India was in the second spot with a market share of 9.2%, unchanged from December. With Vistara's 8.8% and AirAsia India's 7.4% market share, Tata Group airlines claimed 25.4% overall market share.
The Wadia Group-controlled Go First's market share jumped to 8.4% in January from 7.5% in December, while the late Rakesh Jhunjhunwala's recently launched airline Akasa Air made further inroads by improving its market share to 2.8%.
Low-cost carrier SpiceJet Ltd.'s market share fell to 7.3% from 7.6% in the preceding month.
On-Time Performance
IndiGo remained the most punctual airline in January with on-time performance of 84.6%.
Akasa Air was took the second spot with 76.9% of its flights on-time in four major airports in the metro cities. Tata Group's Vistara, Air India and AirAsia India were at third, fourth and fifth spot, respectively.
SpiceJet and Go First's punctuality remained poor at 58.9% and 50.7%, respectively. However, both these airlines were at the top when it came to load factors, followed by Vistara, Air India, AirAsia India and IndiGo, among major carriers.
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