More than 76,000 passengers of budget carrier IndiGo were affected as the airline canceled or delayed flights by more than two hours in September, while Tata-owned Air India denied boarding to 450 passengers during the month, DGCA data showed on Thursday.
According to the data, domestic air passenger traffic grew 29.10 per cent to 1.22 crore in September, against 1.03 crore in the same month last year, with IndiGo accounting for a whopping 63.4 per cent of the total traffic .
Of the total 76,612 passengers affected, 50,945 passengers were affected after IndiGo completely canceled its flights in September, while another 25,667 passengers were affected as the Gurugram-based budget carrier delayed its flights by more than two hours during the month, according to data.
While the airline offered alternative flights and full refunds to the passengers affected by flight cancellations, at the same time the airline only offered refreshments to the passengers for the delayed (by more than two hours) flights, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) said. data revealed.
Significantly, as many as 46 of the 334 aircraft are currently grounded due to various supply chain issues, according to aircraft fleet tracking website Planespotters.
Besides IndiGo, 24,758 Air India passengers and another 24,635 SpiceJet passengers were affected as their airlines delayed some of their flights by more than two hours in September, data showed.
However, Air India offered them flights on other airlines, served them refreshment and lunch and spent Rs 5.27 lakh on facilitation, as part of the mitigation efforts.
According to DGCA, SpiceJet, on its part, has spent Rs 45.78 lakh on facilitating passengers, besides offering alternative flights and refreshments.
Meanwhile, IndiGo maintained its leadership in domestic air passenger traffic and flew 77.70 lakh passengers in September, followed by Vistara (12.29 lakh passengers) and Air India (11.97 lakh passengers), respectively.
Vistara and Air India had a market share of 10 percent and 9.8 percent respectively last month, according to DGCA data.
Air India subsidiary AirAsia India, which has now become AiX Connect, carried 8.16 lakh passengers with a market share of 6.7 percent.
The two other no-frills airlines – SpiceJet and Akasa Air – carried 5.45 lakh and 5.17 lakh passengers on their flights respectively, with a market share of 4.4 per cent and 4.2 per cent in September, according to DGCA data.
IndiGo delivered the highest on-time performance from four key airports – Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru and Hyderabad – at 83.6 per cent last month, while Vistara had a 92 per cent load factor on its aircraft, the highest among all domestic airlines during the month, the DGCA data showed.