IndiGo flies past Jet to become largest airline

The country’s youngest airline has become its largest. Low-cost carrier IndiGo, which began operations this month in 2006, has overtaken Jet Airways in terms of passengers flown.

NEW PECKING ORDER
Carrier	Market share in %		Fleet size
	July, ‘12	June,’12
IndiGo	27.0	26.0	58
Jet	26.6	27.4	101
Air India	18.2	16.8	100
SpiceJet	17.8	18.6	47
GoAir	7.0	6.9	13
Kingfisher	3.4	4.2	20
Fleet utilised for both domestic and international operations;  Source: DGCA data

In a market where many airlines have dithered on bringing in new aircraft, IndiGo has consistently expanded its capacity. For instance, the airline increased its capacity by 29 per cent between October, 2011 to June, 2012. During the same period, Kingfisher’s capacity shrank by 68 per cent.

According to the latest figures released by the DGCA, IndiGo, with 27 per cent market share in July this year, has edged past Jet, which managed 26.6 per cent share. The market shares of Jet Airways and JetLite were 19.4 per cent and 7.2 per cent, respectively.

Kapil Kaul of Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation said while “IndiGo has increased weekly capacity by over 30 per cent in a year, Jet Airways has been moderating its domestic capacity growth over the last few years with capacity growth coming largely due to changes in aircraft configuration, which increased more seats with the launch of Jet Konnect. IndiGo has gone for a long-term expansion plan instead of getting swayed by short-term changes in the market. That has paid off”.

The combined market share of all the low-cost carriers, IndiGo, JetLite, SpiceJet and GoAir, in July hit 59 per cent, marginally up from 58.2 per cent last month.

Air India increased its share from 16.8 per cent in June to 18.2 per cent in July. The market share of Jet (26.6 per cent) declined by one percentage point.

Kingfisher saw its share decline to 3.4 per cent from 4.2 per cent in June. For SpiceJet (17.8 per cent share), the fall was by 0.8 percentage point.