NEW DELHI: While lakhs of seats remained vacant in Air India flights in last four years, the seat occupancy both in the Business and Economy class has shown sudden growth during this financial year.
While total number of vacant seats in Business Class was over 7.5 lakh in the year 2018-19, it reduced to 4.58 lakh in the year 2019-20. Similarly, number of vacant seats in economy class was 64.2 lakhs in the year 2018-19 which reduced considerably to 38.3 lakh in the year 2019-20.
Disinvestment bound Air India has huge nearly 482 flights including 289 flights on domestic routes and 193 flights on international routes. Going by a recent government data, it was revealed that vacant seats kept rising till 2018-19 and it registered a sudden decline in the year 2019-20.
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While the number of vacant seats in the year 2017-18 was nearly 47 lakhs, it increased to 64.2 lakhs during the next year and reduced to 38.3 lakhs in the year 2019-20.
Officials said that the national carrier floated various schemes to attract more passengers including offer a heavy discount to passengers booking a domestic flight for last-minute travel which was announced during May last year.
Main purpose behind the move was to sell the seats that otherwise go empty and improve its seat occupancy rate or passenger load factor (PLF).
The last-minute traveller is often faced with very high ticket prices. In that case, the national carrier decided that for the domestic sector, the very last moment inventory would be sold at a hefty discount.
In December 2019, according to DGCA data, Air India was able to sell only 80.8 per cent seats across its flights, while SpiceJet was able to sell 92.7 per cent seats, Go Air 89.7 per cent, and IndiGo 90.1 per cent.