India's domestic air passenger traffic witnessed a 5.3 per cent growth to 1.36 crore in October, as against 1.26 crore passengers in the same month last year, according to data collated by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA).
Leading Indian carrier IndiGo (NS:INGL) carried 86.40 lakh passengers during the month with a market share of 63.3 per cent, followed by Tata Group's Air India and Vistara which took 26.48 lakh and 12.43 lakh passengers, respectively.
Air India and Air India Express witnessed a market share of 19.4 percent while Vistara, which has merged into Air India, saw a market share of 9.1 percent.
Low-cost carrier SpiceJet with troubles flew 3.35 lakh passengers. Meanwhile, Akasa Air carried 6.16-lakh passengers during October. Two airlines collectively witnessed market shares of 2.4 per cent and 5.4 per cent respectively.
Air traffic surged further into November with the civil aviation ministry saying that on November 17 Indian skies saw a historic milestone with 5,05,412 domestic passengers leaving on one single day and crossing the 5 lakh mark for the first time.
The flight departures were up to 3,173, according to the latest information from the ministry. The occupancy of the flights operated by the main scheduled carriers on the day was also above 90 percent.
For airlines, as far as punctuality is concerned, IndiGo delivered the highest on-time performance of 71.9 per cent during October from the four metro airports -- Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru and Hyderabad. Alliance Air had the lowest OTP at 54.4 per cent among six major airlines of the country, DGCA figures showed.
There has also been some corporate reorganization in India's aviation sector with Vistara, which was earlier a 51:49 percent joint venture between Tata Sons and Singapore Airlines, also getting merged with the full-service carrier Air India on November 12.
Singapore Airlines said it will invest Rs 3,194.5 crore in Air India after the proposed merger of Vistara with the Tata Group-owned airline.
Simultaneously, Air India's subsidiaries, AIX Connect formerly known as Air Asia and Air India Express have merged to form a single budget airline.
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