Domestic Air Traffic

Domestic air passenger traffic is projected to have touched around 1.19 crore in February, only about 4 per cent lower compared to pre-Covid levels, rating agency Icra said on Monday. Icra has also revised the outlook for the domestic aviation industry to stable from negative, citing a fast-paced recovery in domestic passenger traffic in FY 2023 and the expected continuation of the same in FY 2024. "For February 2023, domestic air passenger traffic has been estimated at around 119 lakh, around 5 per cent lower than around 125 lakh in January 2023. "However, it witnessed a YoY (Year-on-Year) growth of around 54 per cent, as February 2022 was marginally impacted by the Omicron variant of Covid 19. Domestic passenger traffic in February 2023 was lower by only around 4 per cent compared to the pre-Covid levels (i.e. February 2020)," it said in a report. For the first 11 months of the current fiscal, Icra said domestic passenger traffic is projected at around 12.29 crore, a y-o-y growth

Rating agency Icra on Monday revised the outlook for the country's aviation sector to stable from negative, citing fast-paced recovery in the domestic air passenger traffic. The industry's loss in the current financial year is projected to be Rs 11,000 crore to Rs 3,000 crore and reduce to Rs 5,000 to Rs 7,000 crore in the next fiscal, it said in a report. While noting that the trend of passenger traffic is expected to continue in FY24, the agency said the industry has also witnessed improved pricing power, as reflected in the healthier yields and thus the revenue per available seat kilometre-cost per available seat kilometre spread of the airlines. "The same is expected to continue, given the sequential decline in aviation turbine fuel (ATF) prices from the peak of June 2022 and the anticipation of relatively stable foreign exchange rates," it said in the report. The outlook for the sector has been revised to stable from negative, Icra said, adding that domestic passenger traffic

The Delhi High Court on Thursday dismissed a plea opposing the permission given to Sikhs to carry kirpans while travelling on civilian flights in India

Smaller outfits losing customers, many firms outsourcing to larger players to stay afloat

Air traffic touches nearly 96 per cent of pre-Covid level

Indian airlines carried 1.14 crore passengers in October, 10 per cent higher than the number of people flown in September. Data released by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) on Tuesday showed that domestic air traffic jumped nearly 27 per cent to 114.07 lakh last month compared to the year-ago period when it was 89.85 lakh. In September, the air traffic number stood at 103.55 lakh. Air traffic has been picking up in recent months after the airline industry was significantly impacted by the coronavirus pandemic. The country's largest airline IndiGo's market share declined to 56.7 per cent in October compared to the previous month when it stood at 58 per cent. The market share of Vistara also fell to 9.2 per cent last month from 9.6 per cent in September, as per the data. Akasa Air, which started operations in August, had a market share of 1.4 per cent in October compared to 0.9 per cent in September. In October, Air India's market share stood at 9.1 per cent while

Indian Railways registers higher growth in quantity of goods carried

The air traffic volume is expected to increase to the fiscal 2020 level of around 340 million passengers in FY23

Delhi, Bengaluru and Chennai were the top three domestic destinations, while Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Singapore took the top three positions for highest international traffic

Railway freight traffic numbers were higher than before

Domestic air passenger traffic rose 5 per cent to 1.02 crore in August and a fast-paced recovery in the traffic is expected this fiscal on the back of normalcy in flight operations and widening vaccination coverage, according to rating agency Icra. Releasing the monthly domestic air passenger traffic data for August on Thursday, Icra further said that international traffic for Indian carriers surpassed the pre-COVID level of around 19.8 lakh by 32 per cent. "The domestic aviation industry continues to witness recovery, with domestic passenger traffic for August 2022 estimated at around 102 lakh, around 5 per cent higher compared to around 97 lakh in July 2022 and around 52 per cent higher in comparison to the domestic passenger traffic in August 2021, although it fell short by around 14 per cent, compared to pre-COVID levels i.e. August 2019," Icra's Suprio Banerjee said. Banerjee is the Vice President & Sector Head - Corporate Ratings at Icra Ltd. In the first five months of this

Despite adverse reports regarding safety and DGCA curbs, SpiceJet reported the highest seat occupancy (84.7 per cent). AirAsia India had the highest on-time performance (95.5 per cent )

IndiGo continued to retain the number one spot with 56.9 per cent market share

Domestic air traffic till now was largely fueled by leisure and people visiting their families

Domestic air passenger traffic is estimated to have logged an 83 per cent growth year-on-year at 10.5-million in April as Covid-19 infection cases waned, leaving a gap of just 5 per cent when compared to the pre-pandemic level, ICRA said on Monday. Indian carriers had flown around 11 million passengers in April 2019. However, the domestic airline operators saw the international passenger traffic marginally surpassing the pre-pandemic numbers (around 1.83 million), with total volumes standing at around 1.85 million, it said. It also said that rising aviation turbine fuel (ATF) prices due to ongoing geo-political issues linked to the Russia-Ukraine conflict continue to evolve as a major threat to the recovery process. For April 2022, the average daily departures were at around 2,726, notably higher than the average daily departures of around 2,000 in the same month a year earlier and higher compared to around 2,588 in March 2022, said Suprio Banerjee, Vice-President & Sector Head, ..

Airlines saw a sharp rebound in traffic with the decline of Covid cases and easing of restrictions

Traffic had started slowing down in end December, as airlines pruned capacity due to fall in demand. Market leader IndiGo cut flights by 20% in January, daily passenger figure fell below 200,000

Domestic traffic has shrunk 38% in first three weeks of Jan, forcing airlines to adjust schedules. Overall industry-wide number of daily departures down to 1,600-1,800 from over 2,500 last month

On a sequential basis, the growth in December was recorded at 5-6 per cent over November 2021

However, the airline is stronger now when compared to situation in 2020 during the first wave of the pandemic, says Ronojoy Dutta