IndiGo carried most passengers in Aug, KFA worst performer

No frill airline IndiGo continued its spree of carrying the maximum number of passengers besides having the largest market share in August, as Civil Aviation Minister Ajit Singh, concerned over Air India's performance, asked the national carrier to prepare a plan to enhance its share.

There was a minor increase of 0.5% in the total number of passengers carried in January-August this year compared with the period last year, official data showed.

IndiGo carried 12.05 lakh passengers last month, followed by Jet Airways-JetLite combined flying 11.01 lakh, SpiceJet 8.07 lakh, Air India 7.94 lakh and GoAir 3.24 lakh.

The worst performer was cash-strapped Kingfisher Airlines  which carried only 1.38 lakh passengers in August, while the new scheduled carrier Air Mantra of Religare, which is operating only two small 17-seater aircraft since July 23, flew a few hundred air travellers to Chandigarh and Amritsar.

In terms of market share, IndiGo was again on top with 27.6%, followed by Jet-JetLite combine with 25.2, SpiceJet with 18.5, Air India 18.2, GoAir with 7.4 and Kingfisher at the end of the list with 3.2%.

Concerned over the national carrier's performance, the Minister asked Air India to submit to him in a week's time a plan to enhance its share in the domestic passenger market.

The plan should include month-wise targets of market share along with corresponding strategy to achieve these targets over the next one year, an official spokesman said.

Noting that Air India had maintained the 18.2% level since July, Singh asked Air India to work out innovative and customer-focused strategies to achieve optimum utilisation of all planes. The data also showed that while IndiGo's passenger load factor (average seats sold in an aircraft) was the highest at 73.4%, most of the other airlines remained between 66 and 68%.

These airlines are Air India, Jet Airways  , JetLite, SpiceJet  and GoAir.

The lowest passenger load factor among the major carriers was Kingfisher with only 53.2%.

Air Mantra of Religare, whose load factor was only 9.1%, also had the maximum flight cancellations at 32.3%, followed by Kingfisher way behind at 7.4%.

Air India was among those carriers which had the lowest cancellations at 1.7% and IndiGo the least at 0.3%, the official figures showed.