The Hindu Business Line : Air India sees drop in number of domestic passengers in first quarter

Air India’s loss could have become Kingfisher Airlines’ gain as it carried an additional 5,55,000 passengers during January-March this year as compared to the previous year.

Our Bureau

New Delhi, April 15 It’s getting increasingly tough for the Maharaja to face up to competition in the domestic skies.

Air India, the new company created by merging Indian and Air India, has registered the sharpest drop in the number of domestic passengers flying with it among all domestic scheduled airlines during the first quarter of this calendar year compared to the same period last year.

This at a time when the domestic air traffic market has grown by more than 11 per cent with all scheduled airlines carrying 1.12 crore passengers during January-March 2008 as compared to just over 1 crore passengers during the comparative period in the previous year.

The latest data from the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) show that Air India (domestic) carried almost 2.9 lakh fewer passengers during the first quarter of this year as compared to the previous year.

Jet Airways too saw a drop in passengers by around 1.12 lakh during this period, while JetLite carried only marginally fewer passengers than the 8.12 lakh carried during the first quarter of 2007. In April 2007, Jet Airways completed the purchase of Air Sahara and renamed it JetLite.

Air India’s loss could have become Kingfisher Airlines’ gain as it carried an additional 5.55 lakh passengers during January-March this year as compared to the previous year.

The decision to buy out Air Deccan saw the combine carry more than 32.65 lakh passengers during the first quarter of this year with Kingfisher alone carrying 16.26 lakh passengers. The UB Group, which is the promoter of Kingfisher, purchased a stake in Air Deccan in May last year.

All the three low-cost airlines - SpiceJet, GoAir and IndiGo - have also done well in terms of number of patrons.

The Delhi-based IndiGo Airline more than doubled its passenger carriage to 11.52 lakh from 5.02 lakh carried during the same period in 2007.

SpiceJet registered an increase of more than 3.39 lakh passengers while the Mumbai-based GoAir also registered a marginal increase in passengers. The Madurai-based Paramount Airways saw a marginal drop in passengers carried during the first quarter of this year as compared to the previous year, the data shows.

The increase in passenger traffic carried by the low-cost airlines during the first quarter of this year also saw their market share grow with IndiGo Airline doubling its share of the pie to 10.3 per cent while SpiceJet’s share touched 10.3 per cent (8.1 per cent).

In comparison, Air India saw its market share shrink to 14.7 per cent (19.2 per cent), while Jet Airways’ fell marginally to 22.7 per cent (24.2 per cent) and JetLite dropped to 7.1 per cent (8.1 per cent) during the same period.

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