NEW DELHI: India’s domestic air passenger traffic nearly doubled to 1.25 crore as against 64.08 lakh recorded in the year-ago month, according to official data released by the DGCA on Monday. India’s passenger traffic was at a similar level of 1.25 crore in January 2019, the pre-covid month.
However, on a month-on-month basis, domestic traffic took a dip of 2%, passenger count stood at over 1.27 crore in December 2022. This sequential decline in traffic comes at a time when domestic airlines are aggressively expanding their fleet size. Tata Group’s Air India recently made an order to buy 470 planes while other airlines such as IndiGo, Akasa and GoFirst are expected to add new planes.
IndiGo, India’s largest carrier, saw its domestic market share decline for the fifth consecutive month at 54.6%. It carried 68.47 lakh passengers last month. In August last year, IndiGo had a market share of 59.72% and since then it has been conceding its share to the newly launched Akasa Air and other players.
Akasa’s share in the domestic market grew to 2.8% in January as against a share of 1.8% in the October-December quarter. Since its launch in August 2022, Akasa Air has crossed the milestone of operating over 600 weekly flights with an announced network of 23 routes connecting 14 cities. Air India and Vistara carried 11.55 lakh and 11.05 lakh passengers, respectively, in January, with a market share of 9.2% and 8.8%, respectively.