India’s domestic air traffic rose over 11 per cent in November, but remained lower than pre-Covid levels (10 per cent lower over November 2019), as per the data released by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation.

In November, 1.17 crore passengers flew on various domestic routes with traffic rising by nearly 3 per cent over October ( when 1.14 crore travelled). November air traffic was 1.05 crore in 2021 and 1.30 crore in 2019 (pre-Covid), respectively.

For the 11-month period of this year (January – November), air passenger traffic grew 52 per cent y-o-y to 11.05 crore; as against 7.26 crore passengers, in the same period last year.

Market Share

As per the data , IndiGo remained the country’s largest carrier by market share. While IndiGo had 55.7 per cent of the market share, it lost some 100-odd basis points (bps) over October when its share was 56.7 per cent. In October, too, it had lost 100 basis points (bps) to competition.

Vistara had the second largest market share at 9.3 per cent; while Air India had 9.1 per cent . The three Tata Group airlines had a combined market share of 26 per cent, a gain of 10 bps over October. Vistara is the airline to have gained market share – among the three Tata-owned entities – last month.

New entrant, Akasa Air – which is into its fourth month of operations — improved market share to 1.8 per cent in November, from 1.4 per cent in the previous month.

SpiceJet had the highest passenger load factor at 92 per cent followed by Vistara at 91.7 per cent. In comparison, IndiGo’s passenger load factor was 86.9 per cent. Meanwhile, passenger load factor for Akasa improved to 79.2 per cent (from 77.5 per cent in October).