Jet Airways crash continues to hit air passenger traffic; sales down due to weak tourist season too

The crash of Naresh Goyal-founded Jet Airways continues to reverberate in the domestic aviation as industry capacity remains muted as of July 2019. The air passenger growth has also dipped to 1.8% due to flat capacity growth and end of tourist season. While July is a traditionally weak season for the aviation industry, the eventual discontinuation of the operations of Jet Airways and domestic airlines expanding more on international routes than domestic routes has caused a subdued capacity growth measured in ASKMs, which has led to slower growth in passenger traffic, Kinjal Shah, Vice President and Co-Head, Corporate Sector Ratings, ICRA, said.

Jet Airways had shut operations on 17 April 2019, after which, many airlines jumped in to fill the void created by the cash-strapped airline. However, the same has not spelt much success either in ramping up domestic or international capacity. While the domestic carriers have been increasing focus on international operations as is evident by increased capacity deployment, “the Indian airlines continue to underperform the industry on international routes with passenger traffic de-growth of 14.7% in July 2019, as against 0.6% for the industry,” ICRA report said.