Air India Gains Share,Flies Ahead of SpiceJet to 3rd Spot

Amid a steep decline of 15.7% in domestic passenger traffic,Air India clawed back some of its lost ground to garner a market share of 20.8% in October.Indigo,Jet Airways and SpiceJet improved yields and also gained market share after Kingfisher Airlines licence was suspended.Air traffic in October fell sharply to 45.55 lakh passengers compared to 54.01 lakh in the same month last year despite the onset of the festival season,with analysts pointing at exorbitant fares as the principal factor for the decline.In the first ten months of the calendar year,passenger traffic fell 2.5%.Low-cost carrier IndiGo led with a 27.8% share in October though the Jet Airways-Jet Konnect combined managed to narrow the gap.Naresh Goyals airline carved a 24.7% share from 23.8% in September.SpiceJet inched to 19.1% up from 18.5% in September.Jeh Wadias GoAir reported a market share of 7.6%.In what was a fruitful month for airlines,passenger load factors improved sizeably for airlines in October compared with September.Indigo reported the highest load factor of 77.2% followed by Air India with 74.7%.SpiceJet and GoAir reported loads of around 70%.Though JetLite had passenger load factor of around 70%,its full service carrier Jet Airways reported the lowest among its peers at 67.5%.Air India was the biggest gainer in October.The domestic passenger data for the last six months shows consistent increase in the market share of Air India,a PIB release said.It rose from 16.2% in May 2012 to 20.8% in October 2012.For the months of June,July,August and September 2012,the market share of Air India was 16.8%,18.2%,18.2% and 19.3%,respectively.

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