Air India ‘s market share dwindles

Air India,grappling with pilots' strike,remained at fourth spot among all Indian carriers.

With dwindling market share,Air India,which is grappling with a pilots’ strike,remained at fourth spot among all Indian carriers,besides recording poor passenger load factor and on-time performance at metro airports along with the highest number of cancellations.

With a section of its pilots on a strike since May 7,the market share of Air India reduced to 16.2 per cent in May compared to 17.6 in April,according to air traffic data released by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA).

Cash-strapped Kingfisher Airline’s remained at last spot among all the seven domestic carriers with 5.2 per cent market share.

The data showed that Jet Airways and its subsidiary JetLite jointly cornered 27.9 per cent of the market share,followed by no-frill airlines IndiGo with 24.9 per cent and SpiceJet at 18.5. GoAir registered a market share of 7.2 per cent.

The market share of low cost carriers has marginally increased while that of full service carriers decreased compared to the figures in April.

In April,Jet and JetLite combined had a market share of 28.2 per cent while IndiGo had 23.8,Kingfisher 5.4 per cent,Spicejet 17.7 and GoAir had 7.3 per cent.

Air India,which is facing a strike by the pilots owing allegiance to now derecognised Indian Pilots Guild since May 7 had the highest percentage of flight cancellation at 3.5 per cent among all the domestic carriers in May,followed by Kingfisher with 3.2 per cent cancellations.

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Low-cost carrier IndiGo and Go Air had the least number of flight cancellations at 0.1 per cent and 0.5 per cent respectively,while Jet Airways had 0.7 per cent,SpiceJet 0.8 and JetLite had 1.7 per cent.

Air India’s passenger load factor was even worse than that of cash-strapped Kingfisher Airlines. The national carrier’s passenger load factor was just 70.6,while that of Kingfisher Airlines was 73.3 per cent. IndiGo registered the highest passenger load factor at 86.3 per cent.

According to DGCA,the passenger load factor increased in May due to ongoing peak holiday season.

Among all scheduled operators,Air India registered the worst on time performance (OTP) of 78 per cent,while IndiGo had 91.5 per cent,Go Air 88.6 per cent and Jet Airways and JetLite at 85.6 per cent. Kingfisher had an OTP of 80.2 per cent.

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On the passenger complaint front,IndiGo had the highest number with two per 10,000 passengers,GoAir had 1.9 while Air India and Jet Airways had the complaint rate of 1.5.

The domestic airlines carried 258.07 lakh passengers passengers from January-May 2012,an increase of 5.34 per cent on year-on-year basis.

“Passengers carried by domestic airlines during January-May 2012 were 258.07 lakh as against 244.98 lakh during the corresponding period of previous year thereby registering a growth of plus 5.34 per cent,” DGCA said in its monthly data report.

However,on the month-on-month basis the passengers carried during the period marginally fell by 0.87 per cent at 54.48 lakh from 54.96 lakh carried in the corresponding month of 2011.