Business - India;Domestic air traffic continues to decline

The Indian aviation industry continues to witness a slump with domestic air traffic in September decreasing by almost 20 per cent compared with the same month in the previous year. In August, traffic had decreased by 16 per cent, as against that in the same month a year ago.



Traffic for the July-September quarter saw a decrease of around 17 per cent compared with the same quarter last year.

Industry experts said that apart from the excess capacity in the industry, the slowdown in demand even in the peak season was a result of the recent fare hikes of 10-15 per cent which was announced by several full service carriers.

Experts added that there was an excess capacity of 20 per cent or around 60 aircraft, which needs to be taken out before there is a match between demand and supply. As a result, more than 300 domestic flights will have to go out of operations.

“Airlines have already cut down capacity by 25-30 per cent starting from June. They need to cut down another 20 per cent,” said an industry expert.

The rationalisation in capacity has helped Kingfisher Red, formerly Simplifly Deccan. Kingfisher Red’s loads shot to more than 51 per cent, around 32 percentage points up from the last month.

AIR TRAFFIC IN SEPTEMBER Airline

AUGUST 2008 SEPTEMBER 2008

Marketshare Load Marketshare Load

Indian 18.0 56.2 18.1 53.3
Jet Airways 24.2 68.3 23.6 64.0
JetLite 9.3 63.0 8.9 58.8
Deccan 10.2 39.0 12.3 51.7
Kingfisher 14.8 59.0 15.3 56.7
SpiceJet 8.5 56.8 8.0 50.5
Paramount 1.7 69.0 1.7 62.0
GoAir 2.7 70.0 1.8 57.0
IndiGo 10.3 62.0 10.1 56.0

September 2008: 2.6 million passengers
September 2007: 3.3 million passengers
July-Sept quarter 2008: 8.6 million passengers
July-Sept quarter 2007: 10.2 million passengers


It has been able to capture 12.3 per cent share of the domestic market, up from its August marketshare of 10.2 per cent. IndiGo, which had surpassed Kingfisher Red by capturing 10.3 per cent of the market share in August, slipped to 10.1 per cent in September.

“After turning to Kingfisher Red, which is just an extension of Kingfisher Airlines, we cut off a lot of excess flab in terms of flights. This has resulted in the higher loads,” said a Kingfisher executive.

Apart from Kingfisher Red, every other airline has seen a fall in loads in September compared with the previous month