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Soumik Dey
Soumik Dey

FLIGHT OCCUPANCY

Domestic air passengers grew 17 pc in Jan-July this year

igi-airport-passengers-afp Representational Image | AFP

Air passengers in India carried by domestic airlines have grown by 17.18 per cent to 65.72 million, in the January to July 2017 period. The trend is marginally better than the 15 per cent growth in annual passengers, as expected by airlines.

According to the DGCA data, passenger load factor (PLF―an indicator of flight occupancy) showed Spice Jet on the tops with 94.4 per cent PLF achieved in July 2017.

National carrier Air India registered the lowest PLF at 75.5 per cent. Most other major airlines had a PLF of 80 to 89 per cent during the month. Air India also had a high rate of flight cancellations (1.6 per cent) among major airlines who averaged between 0.25 to 0.76 per cent flight cancellations.

Technical snags were reported as the main reason causing large numbers of flight cancellations (54.2 per cent), the DGCA data said. Consequential or miscellaneous reasons caused 34.9 per cent flight cancellations during July.

Air India again topped the list of airlines against whom a maximum number of passenger complaints were received (1.7/10,000 passengers). Low budget carrier Indigo and newcomer Zoom Air had the least number of passenger complaints against them last month.

Flight problem (29.1 per cent), customer service (27.3 per cent) and Baggage (19.9 per cent) comprised the major reasons invoking passenger complaints against airlines.

Other reasons for passenger complaints include refunds (5.8 per cent), staff behavior (5.5 per cent) and fare (4.3 per cent).

For On-Time performance, Indigo topped the list at four metro airports (Bangalore, Delhi, Hyderabad and Mumbai) with 84.6 per cent on time performance of its flights.

Jet Airways and Jetlite had the least numbers for OTP with just 64.2 per cent of their flights able to maintain route timings at these airports. A majority of the delays were reported to be fore 'reactionary' reasons by airlines (66 per cent).

Among the four metro airports, airlines reported the least on time performance from Mumbai airport, while Hyderabad and Bangalore airports scored high for on-time performance by airlines.

Jet Airways+JetLite paid the highest compensation (Rs 264.92 lakh) to passengers for denying boarding. A highest of 37,210 passengers were affected due to flight delays by Indigo Airlines, yet surprisingly the airline also spent the lowest on compensation and facilities to delayed passengers at just 1.14 lakh during July, the DGCA data showed. 

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