Aviation snippets

A series of heavy discounts helped Indian carriers fly 21.6% more passengers in February this year compared with the same month last year. Budget carrier IndiGo continued to lead the way, registering a record market share of 37.1% during the month. In January, the airline's market share was at 36.4%. Jet Airways, along with JetLite too, managed to improve its market share marginally to 24.3% (up from 24.1% in January).
National carrier Air India came in third with 17.8% share of air traffic, a decline over 18.7% the airline had recorded in the month before. For others, market share remained largely con stant -SpiceJet 9.2% (9.4% n January), GoAir 8.9%, Air Costa 1%, AirAsia 1.2%                                     (1.3% in January) and Vistara 0.5% (0.2% in January).
As per data available with the aviation regulator DGCA, airlines' occupancy improved in February due to reduction of additional flights by airlines and distribution of passengers on existing flights.
During this period, Jet Airways and JetLite reported the highest seat occupancy at 89.5% and 89.7%, respectively, while the newlylaunched Tata-SIA joint venture Vistara continued to struggle, filling only 58.6% of its seats. IndiGo's passenger load factor stood at 88%, while that of Air India improved to 83.8% from 82.4% in January .
IndiGo also turned in the best on-time performance (OTP) with 83.8% of its flights sticking to scheduled time in February. SpiceJet came in next with ontime performance of 75.8%.Air India came last in terms of punctuality with 70.9%.However, the airline's OTP got better over 52.1% recorded in January.