Budget carrier SpiceJet had to shell out over Rs 31 lakh as compensation to over 17,000 passengers in July. This is the highest among all the airlines.

According to the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), all the airlines had to spend, on compensation and facilities, over Rs 66 lakh for over 47,700 passengers. This amount was spent on account of denied boarding, cancellation and delay beyond two hours.

Interestingly, SpiceJet's competitor and leader in the budget airline space, Indigo, did not report any case for compensation or facilities on account of denied boarding and cancellation during July. Even another budget carrier Go Air had mentioned ‘Nil' under the head ‘denied boarding'.

The Civil Aviation Requirement (CAR) stipulates all the airlines to compensate an amount between Rs 2,000 and Rs 4,000 on account of denied boarding, cancellations and delays beyond 2 hours. Apart from this, the airlines are also required to provide refund, rebooking on other flights, hotel accommodation and refreshments.

Passenger complaints

DGCA data show that Jet Airways and Go Air had the maximum number of complaints while Air India and Indigo had the least. During July, 1,055 passenger-related complaints were received.

Jet Airways and Indigo had 3.6 complaints per 10,000 passengers carried and for Air India and Indigo, the number was 1.4 each.

On time Performance

Go Air had the best record in terms of ‘on time' performance during July. 93.1 per cent of its flights were on time. ‘On-time' means flights that departed within 15 minutes of the schedule time of departure. Here, the national carrier Air India scored very poorly and came last with only 75 per cent flights on time.

Passenger Carried

However, Air India performed much better in terms of passengers carried in July. All, except Air India, showed decline in the number of passengers carried. Air India carried 8.33 lakh passenger in July in comparison to 7.93 lakh in June.

With this increase Air India also boosted its market share from 14.9 per cent in June to 16.5 per cent in July. However, it is still at fourth place after Jet-JetLite combine (26 per cent), Kingfisher (19.1 per cent) and Indigo (18.9 per cent).

All the domestic airlines carried 50.37 lakh passengers in July which is nearly 3 lakh less than the previous month's figure.

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