Powered by strong growth over the last decade, India has emerged as the world's third-biggest domestic market, moving up two spots from 5th place ten years ago. The country was the smallest market a decade ago, offering just about 8 million seats, behind Indonesia in 4th and Brazil in 3rd place, while the US and China remained in 1st and 2nd places respectively. The United States and China continue to be the top two largest domestic aviation markets.
Based on OAG data, "India has now overtaken the Brazilian and Indonesian domestic markets to take third place, with an airline capacity of 15.6 million seats this April 2024." India seat capacity growth has been fantastic, at 6.9 percent annually in the last decade. "Among the five domestic markets analyzed, India is the fastest-growing," the data says. "China follows closely with an annual growth rate of 6.3 percent from 2014 to 2024, while the US and Indonesia show significantly lower growth rates."
Another key metric in the OAG report is the LCC capacity share in these key domestic markets:. In April 2024, LCCs represented 78.4% of domestic airline capacity in India—the highest across the five markets. "In a decade, IndiGo has almost doubled its market share from 32 per cent of capacity in 2014 to 62 per cent currently. While the total market has registered negligible growth at 0.7 per cent per annum, IndiGo's domestic capacity has grown at an astonishing 13.9 per cent per year", says the report. Strong growth has been seen under Prime Minister Narendra Modi in India, which provided the bedrock for the trajectory that the aviation industry will take over the next 25 years. On November 19 last year, Indian carriers flew 456,910 domestic passengers, a single day air traffic record since the pandemic and a 7.4 per cent higher than the pre-Covid level, as per the Civil Aviation Ministry data.
Government data has revealed that the number of airports in India has increased from 74 to 157 in the span of the last decade. Furthermore, more than 91 lakh passengers have benefited from the Digi Yatra service, while over 35 lakh users have downloaded the app in 2023.
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