Thursday, 18 October 2012

Domestic air travel in free fall on high fares


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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