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The financial crisis at Jet Airways, and SpiceJet’s troubles due to the grounding of Boeing 737 MAX aircraft, have benefited IndiGo Airlines the most.
IndiGo further consolidated its leadership position in the domestic market in terms of passengers carried, as its market share expanded to 47 per cent in March, against 44 per cent a month ago.
While India’s domestic passenger traffic grew a marginal 0.1 per cent to 11.6 million, IndiGo reported a 19 per cent growth in passengers to 5.4 million, according to data released by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA).
“With the grounding of Boeing 737 MAX in the middle of March, SpiceJet saw a marginal blip in its market share. Go Air, Vistara and AirAsia India gained market share at Jet’s expense and reported a share of 10 per cent, 4 per cent and 6 per cent respectively,” said a report by analysts at Prabhudas Lilladher.
Multiple steps
IndiGo has been taking multiple steps to ensure it emerges stronger in the ongoing crisis in the sector. It temporarily added approximately 20 new departures each from Mumbai and Delhi in a phased manner from April 15. It also launched three new international flights.
This comes even as domestic available seat kilometers (ASK), a measure of passenger carrying capacity, slowed down to 5 per cent in March 2019 compared to March 2018. This is the lowest in the past 16 months as the industry continued to witness capacity pull-out.
IndiGo, however, continues to aggressively add capacity, reporting a 26 per cent YoY increase in ASK last month. SpiceJet reported a 13 per cent YoY growth in ASK. However, Jet, with only a handful of aircraft operating due to the ongoing financial crisis, saw its ASK decline 66 per cent YoY.
International passenger traffic growth fell 2 per cent to 2.1 million in March 2019. However, IndiGo continued to expand its international footprint by carrying 0.5 million passengers, up 60 per cent YoY.
The airlne’s market share stood at 24 per cent (21 per cent in February 19).
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