Domestic air passenger traffic grew to 9.7 per cent in 2014 compared with 4.43 per cent in 2013, driven by lower fares and the introduction of new airlines during the period, according to a report by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA).
The Indian airlines carried 67.38 million passengers in the January-December period as against 61.46 million passenger it had flown in the year ended on December 2013, the official data released by DGCA showed.
On a month-on month basis, the domestic passenger traffic rose by 15.29 per cent to 6.44 million passengers in December from 5.58 million passengers in 2013, DGCA data said.
Of the total, while private air carriers flown 54.96 million passengers in 2014, which is 81.6 per cent of the total passenger traffic, Air India – the national carrier – carried 12.42 million passenger in the year ended on December 2014
Private budget carrier IndiGo continues to dominate the domestic market as it stood first by carrying 21.42 million passengers during the period, cornering 31.8 per cent market share in the period.
Naresh Goyal-owned Jet Airways together with its subsidiary JetLite manged to get 21.7 per cent market share of the total domestic passenger traffic in 2014, having flown 14.66 million passengers in the reporting period.
On the other side, while budget carrier SpiceJet represented 17.4 per cent of the total domestic passenger traffic in 2014, by carrying 11.74 million passengers, GoAir carried 6.2 million passengers in the reported period.
Meanwhile, all seven domestic air carriers, including Air Asia and regional airline Air Costa, reported a higher seat factor in December 2014 as against November, on the back of the holiday season, the data showed.
Load or seat factor is a measure of how much of an airline's passenger carrying capacity is used or average percentage of seats filled in an aircraft.
(Edited by Joby Puthuparampil Johnson)