Air traffic grows 11.6%

The festive season has started with a bang for the domestic airline industry with last month seeing 39.1 lakh people taking to the skies, which is 11.6% higher than last September. Passenger traffic has grown 18.5% in January-September, 2010, to 373.2 lakh. Both the industry and government now hope that well-run airlines will be able to fly out of red. “If this trend (of growth) continues, almost all airlines will become profitable in near future,” aviation minister Praful Patel said. The growth in passenger traffic has also come as a huge relief to airport operators as modernization plans worth several crores were beginning to face cash crunch during the slowdown.
“Private airports in big metros and smaller ones run by Airports Authority of India will get more user development fee from fliers. The rising traffic will make airlines increase flights and greater aircraft movement will also generate more revenue,” said a senior ministry official. While Naresh Goyal’s Jet-JetLite combine led the market with 26.9% share, Vijay Mallya’s Kingfisher was second at 19.8%. National carrier AI (domestic) managed to widen its gap with leading LCC (low-cost carrier) IndiGo that was threatening to become number three two months back. This despite the fact that AI (domestic) had lowest load factors, thanks mainly to absence of a domestic LCC in its fold. In fact at 66.7%, AI was the only airline to have load factors below 70%. The others ranged from Kingfisher's 85.9% to Go's 70%.