Domestic air passenger traffic grew 24% in February to 7.48 million: DGCA

Domestic airlines flew 7.48 million passengers in February, marking a growth of over 24 per cent in passenger numbers, with a majority of the carriers recording over 80 per cent seat occupancy, data compiled by aviation regulator DGCA showed.

In February last year, airlines carried 6.02 million passengers.

The latest DGCA data showed that no-frills carrier IndiGo's market share stood at 36.8 per cent in February while that of Jet Airways was 18.4 per cent.

Overall, the carriers ferried 7.48 million passengers, an increase of 24.27 per cent compared to the year-ago period, a senior DGCA official said.

The load factor, an indicator of seat occupancy, showed that a majority of the carriers, including IndiGo and SpiceJet, was more than 80 per cent, the official pointed out.

The market share of national carrier Air India stood at 15.4 per cent, followed by SpiceJet (13.1 per cent), GoAir (8 per cent), JetLite (2.8 per cent), AirAsia (2.2 per cent), Vistara (2 per cent) and Air Costa (0.8 per cent). The market share of Air Pegasus and Trujet was at 0.3 per cent each, as per DGCA.

In January, local carriers had flown 7.65 million passengers.

According to DGCA, a total of 15.13 million passengers were ferried by airlines during January-February. This represents an increase of over 23 per cent compared with 12.26 million passengers a year ago.