Aviation snippets

India’s largest passenger carrier IndiGo lost market share for the first time in seven months in November. The Delhi-based low-cost carrier’s market share came down to 28.6% versus 30.2% in October.
Passenger traffic grew at a slower pace in November with an increase of only 2.3% to 51.4 lakh passengers as against 50.2 lakh passengers in the same month last year. National carrier Air India regained the second spot with a 19.3% share of the market, while SpiceJet fell to the third spot with 19%. Jet Airways and JetLite combined had a market share of 24.1%. Standalone Jet Airways had 18.5% share of the market, while JetLite had 5.6% market share.
Mumbai-based low-cost carrier GoAir, thanks to the discounts it offered, managed to improve its market share to 8.8% in November as against 7.7% in October.
As per the DGCA data, load factor – the measure of the number of seats filled on a flight -- improved significantly in November. In October, only IndiGo and Air India breached the 70% load factor mark. But in November, GoAir joined the mix.
Air India’s was the biggest gainer, flying planes 75.1% full, five percentage points more than October when its planes were 70.7% full. GoAir also had a significant improvement with 73.2% load factor as compared to 65.9% in October. IndiGo also slipped in terms of on time performance and went down to 86.5% during November, down from 92.1% in October.