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Journalism of Courage
On account of rising fares, the aviation industry faces a sharp decline of 25 per cent in the number of domestic passengers carried during third quarter of 2008 (July – September) as compared with the second quarter this year.
According to the latest figures released by civil aviation ministry, the total number of domestic passengers during July to September 2008 stood at 86.13 lakh, down by almost 29 lakh from previous quarter. Of this, September accounted for 31 per cent of total domestic travel at 26.76 lakh.
Maintaining its lead for second quarter in a row, Naresh Goyal-owned Jet Airways and Jet lite flew 28.09 lakh travellers in the third quarter, seeing a decline of 5.67 lakh from previous quarter. It cornered a market share of 32.5 per cent. The sharpest fall came for Kingfisher-Deccan, which saw its traffic fall by 9 lakhs, to touch 22.76 lakh, with a market share of 26.5 per cent.
Air India (domestic) also witnessed a decline in the number of fliers which is down to 15.61 lakh in the third quarter from 17.71 in the previous one. While all the other airlines — Spice Jet, Go Air and Indigo — saw fewer passengers flying as compared with previous quarter, Paramount bucked the trend, with a marginal increase of thousand passengers in third quarter as compared with the previous one.
