Traffic in India’s domestic air passenger market, the world’s third largest in FY24, may have beaten pre-pandemic levels, but the number of flights during the period declined.Go First suspending its operations, followed by multiple airlines grounding aircraft for want of both spares and engine service, took a toll on the number of flights, data from aviation analytics firm Cirium show.
Indian airlines were able to undertake 1.05 million flights in FY24, which was lower than the 1.07 million flights clocked in FY20, a drop of 2%. But new routes, aided by the opening of new airports and expansion of existing ones, helped boost passenger numbers. Air passenger traffic in FY24 surged to an estimated 154 million, beating the previous peak of 141 million in FY20, according to research and ratings agency Icra.
Suprio Banerjee, vice president and sector head, Corporate Ratings, Icra, said, “The growth rate for flights, other than passenger traffic, also depends on the availability of aircraft/ capacity.” Indian airlines saw average seat occupancy per aircraft (passenger load factor or PLF) grow to 86% in FY24 from 81% in FY20.“Given the growth in FY24 (compared to FY20) has been higher than the growth rate of flight departures in FY24 (compared to FY20), it indicates the sector operated at a higher PLF,” Banerjee added.
The high PLF levels can be attributed to the surge in the number of routes served by IndiGo, which controls more than 60% of the domestic market. It has a monopoly on more than 500 one-way routes. For instance, routes like Ranchi-Chennai, Raipur-Mumbai, Mangaluru-Hyderabad, Kolkata-Ahmedabad are served only by IndiGo. Because of this, the airline is estimated to have better PLFs than other highly contested routes like Delhi-Mumbai.
Before the pandemic, Air India, then controlled by the central government, was the only operator of wide body aircraft. Since many of these legacy planes had to be grounded after its takeover by Tata Group, the number of wide body aircraft flights fell to less than half during FY24 as against FY20.Nearly 150 commercial aircraft are grounded across airports — more than half of these by market leader IndiGo. Go First’s 54 grounded aircraft also form a substantial chunk.“Icra estimates 24-26% of the total fleet of Indian airlines was grounded as on March 31. Domestic passenger traffic, however, posted healthy growth driven by strong demand from leisure as well as business segments, leading to ~13% YoY growth in FY24 and ~9% over pre-Covid levels of FY20,” Banerjee added.
