Domestic Air Traffic Surges to 133.68 Lakh in March

New Delhi, Apr 15 (PTI) Domestic airlines carried 133.68 lakh passengers in March, an increase of nearly 3.7 per cent on an annual basis, according to official data released on Monday.

In March 2023, domestic air traffic stood at 128.93 lakh and the count stood at 126.48 lakh in February this year.

In terms of On Time Performance (OTP), Akasa Air topped the list at 84.5 per cent, followed by AIX Connect (83 per cent), IndiGo (81.3 per cent), Vistara (76.6 per cent), Air India (71.9 per cent) and SpiceJet (63.6 per cent).

Alliance Air's OTP was the lowest at 48.6 per cent, according to the data released by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA).

The OTP of scheduled domestic airlines is computed for four metro airports -- Bangalore, Delhi, Hyderabad, and Mumbai.

Meanwhile, IndiGo's market share rose to 60.5 per cent in March while that of Air India increased to 13.1 per cent.

The market share of Vistara dropped to 9.6 per cent whereas that of SpiceJet inched up to 5.3 per cent.

However, Akasa Air's market share slipped marginally to 4.4 per cent and AIX Connect's declined to 5.8 per cent.

In March, more than 2 lakh passengers were affected by flight delays while cancellations impacted 23,675 passengers.

As many as 943 passengers were denied boarding.

"Passengers carried by domestic airlines during January - March 2024 were 391.46 lakhs as against 375.04 lakhs during the corresponding period of the previous year thereby registering an annual growth of 4.38 per cent and monthly growth of 3.68 per cent," the regulator said.