Civil Aviation : March 2013

March has sprung up surprises for the airline industry as full service carrier Jet Airways lost passenger share in spite of offering heavily discounted air tickets aimed at garnering more air traffic, while arch-rival Air India was able to bounce back and regain lost market share.
Official data from the aviation regulator DGCA shows that while budget carrier IndiGo continued to be the largest airline by number of passengers flown garnering 27.4% of the domestic flier base, Jet Airways’ marketshare dropped to 23.8% in March compared with 25.4% in February. Budget carrier SpiceJet continued to hold on to the No.3 spot it gained in February with 20.4% of the domestic market pie, while national carrier Air India bounced back from 18.9% market share in February to come neck-to-neck with SpiceJet at 20.2% market share in March.
GoAir, too, increased its market share to 8.1% in March. Last month was also significant in domestic aviation business as air travel demand picked up (after 11 continuous months of decline) by 1.58% to 51.81 lakh in comparison with February.
However, compared with last year, the overall decline in demand continued and air traffic showed a de-growth of almost 3% to 152.12 lakh passengers compared with March 2012. Air India remained an outperformer in the month of March as the airline reported the highest aircraft occupancy (or passenger load factor), even ahead of market leader IndiGo, filling 81% of its seats. IndiGo's load factor remained at 79%.
Meanwhile, Jet Airways had the lowest aircraft occupancy in the industry at 71.3%, meaning that a third of their total capacity was empty. Following in the footsteps of SpiceJet, the country’s second largest carrier Jet Airways had announced a bigger sale of 20 lakh seats at Rs.2,250 for travel up to anytime till December 31 this year in February.
What has perhaps worked in favour of Air India was a slew of discounted tickets through 30- and 60-day advance purchase schemes like 'jaldi jaldi', which don’t have price points as low as Jet and SpiceJet’s offers. However, AI might be improving its performance but not service standards as DGCA data show that AI had to pay over Rs.80 lakh in compensation in March alone for delayed or cancelled flights.