A sharp rise in airfares after Jet Airways began reducing flights from earlier this year, grounding of Spice-Jet’s Boeing 737 Max and the economic slowdown in India has seen the country slip from being the world’s fastest growing domestic air travel market to the fourth spot. Russia, the US and Japan are the top three growing markets now, according to the International Air Transport Association (IATA).
“Domestic demand (overall globally) rose 4.1% in March, which was a deceleration from 6.2% growth recorded in February, driven largely by developments in China and India. India’s domestic traffic rose just 3.1% in March, down from February’s growth of 8.3% and well off the torrid five-year average growth pace of close to 20% per month.
The slowdown largely reflects reduction in flight operations of Jet Airways – which stopped flying in April – as well as disruptions at Mumbai airport owing to construction,” IATA said in a statement.
This is perhaps the sharpest fall in growth witnessed by a major market. India had seen 52 straight months of double-digit growth. December 2018 was the last month of double-digit growth when India had 1.3 crore domestic passengers, up 12.9% from December 2017. In January and February this year, the domestic growth rate had declined to 9.1% and 5.6%, respectively.
The government is trying to revive demand by facilitating other airlines, mainly SpiceJet, to acquire Jet’s planes and airport slots. Other airlines are taking in Jet’s crew members to operate the additional capacity they are inducting.
While SpiceJet has already started flying Jet’s B737s, Vistara is looking at taking Jet’s B737s and twin-aisle B777s for preponing medium-haul flights to places like Europe as the airline is now permitted to fly abroad. The other Tata JV AirAsia India is also considering to induct Jet’s B737s.
Air India and AI Express were also looking at inducting Jet’s B737s and B777s. But, given the Maharaja’s poor financial health – due to which almost 20 of its A320s, B777s and B787s are on ground for want of engines – that has not happened so far.
