Air traffic spikes by 11.2%; more passengers flew in November even amid slowdown

While the Indian economy is witnessing a slowdown, more passengers flew in November 2019 as compared to the period last year with passenger growth witnessing a 3.86% growth on-year and 11.2% jump on-month. “The passenger load factor in the month of trend compared to previous month primarily due to the onset of tourist season,” aviation watchdog DGCA said on Thursday. From January-November 2019, 13.1 crore passengers were carried as opposed to 12.6 crore carried in the same period last year. Further, budget carrier IndiGo continued to maintain its winning streak and carried the largest number of passengers in November as well. With close to half the market share of Indian aviation, IndiGo alone has carrier almost one in every two passengers. SpiceJet and Air India followed at 16.1% and 12.1% respectively. 

These airlines were the most punctual

Go Air, Vistara, Air Asia and IndiGo were the most punctual airlines in November 2019 and according to DGCA, Go Air reported the most on-time performance at 67.6%. State-run Air India showed the least on-time performance in domestic aviation at 42%. Further, flights were the most punctual at Bengaluru airport and least punctual at Mumbai airport out of four cities viz Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Delhi and Mumbai in consideration. 

Here’s why some flights were cancelled

Flight cancellation incidents were at 1.87% meaning less than 2% of the total number of scheduled flights were cancelled in November 2019. As per DGCA data, weather conditions were the major cause of cancellations followed by technical snag incidents. 

This year, barring April 2019 where passenger growth had fallen by 4.5%, all other months have reported monthly growth. Two reasons had contributed to the fall in passenger growth in April. While Boeing’s 737 MAX was grounded worldwide due to plane crash tragedy, the year also saw shut down of Naresh Goyal-founded Jet Airways.