NEW DELHI: High
airfares and prohibitive airport user charges at places like Delhi amid a
slowing economy have finally taken their toll on domestic air travel. After
negative month-on-month growth for a while now, this year is staring at the
possibility of witnessing lesser people take to skies than 2011.
The
January-September, 2012 period saw 438.4 lakh people flying within the country
- 0.9% less than last year's figure of 442.2 lakh in the same period. The
single digit negative growth recorded for past many months has also
accelerated. Last month saw a 12.4% fall in domestic flyers with the figure at
40.2 lakh as against 45.9 lakh in the same month last year.
Airline officials say
they expect the free fall in traffic to be checked with the onset of the
festive season. The festive rush is likely to push up aircraft occupancies,
which saw 30%-35% seats remaining unoccupied.
"We may see a fall in domestic passengers
this year over 2011. The winter schedule will kick in shortly
and domestic flights
are getting
reduced by 19% along with Kingfisherremaining
grounded. So there's not much capacity to make up for the lost ground even if
demand suddenly picks up in a big way," a senior official said.
While passengers do not come flocking to airports now, airlines are hoping for
better times financially. "Kingfisher going out of
the system has meant that the demand-supply mismatch has been corrected,"
said an airline
official.
On the market share front, LCC IndiGoremained top of
the charts, followed closely by the Jet Group. Air India(domestic)
regained
the third spot by displacing LCC SpiceJet, thanks to an aggressive marketing by the
maharaja's team. Kingfisher, which flew till September 30 before
a lockout was declared, was the smallest schedule airline with a
mere 3.5% share.
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