Despite a rather slow post-pandemic recovery in the Asia-Pacific aviation markets and a negative forecast by Investment Information and Credit Rating Agency of India (ICRA), the Indian domestic civil aviation sector has outdone itself with a 27% year-on-year increase in passenger traffic in October 2022. As per the data revealed by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA, India), domestic operators in India carried 114.07 lakh passengers in October 2022. The number stood at 103.55 lakh in September 2022.
In the 10-month period from January to October 2022, the domestic air carriers carried 988.31 lakh passengers, up from 620.96 lakh during the year-ago period, an annual growth of 59%, DGCA said.
However, the traffic in October 2022 was slightly lower than compared to October 2019, when the domestic airlines flew 123.16 lakh passengers.
Individually, IndiGo carried 64.71 lakh passengers in October 2022, Tata-owned Air India flew 10.38 lakh, and AirAsia India surpassed GoFirst and SpiceJet becoming the fourth-biggest domestic carrier. SpiceJet remained at number five, accounting for 7.3% of the domestic market while Go First slipped to a sixth position carrying 8.02 lakh passengers.
Akasa Air, India's newest carrier carried 1.61 lakh passengers in October 2022, garnering a market share of 1.4%.
Meanwhile in a new high for Air India, for the first time in eight years, the airline has the best on-time performance of 90.8%. Vistara and AirAsia were the second and third best followed by IndiGo.