July 2016: Performance of Indian carriers in domestic aviation market

Airlines in India together carried a total of 85.08 lakh (8.58 million) passengers in the domestic sector in July 2016. Continuing its dream run with above 20% year on year growth rate, the domestic aviation sector had handled 560.87 lakh passengers with 23.01% YoY growth during first six month (January-July) of 2016 over the same period a year ago. While the MoM growth rate for the month of July was at 25.82%. Going by the passenger growth trend of the first half of 2016 and the planned capacity expansion during the second half of 2016 (LCCs like IndiGo, GoAir and FSC like Vistara), it remains only matter of time that domestic aviation sector in India to record 100 million annual passenger for the first time in 2016. While IndiGo maintained and further consolidated its top position in terms of domestic market share SpiceJet continued to outperform others in terms of load factors with above 90% PLF for 15 straight months and Vistara once again occupied the top position in the on-time performance charts.

As expected, IndiGo leads the market share with 39.8% in July 2016, its lifetime high market share. The difference between IndiGo and Jet Airways (number two) is ever increasing and the former is more than double the volume of the later. In the month of July IndiGo's market share has surpassed the combined market share of all three full-service airlines  (Air India, Jet Airways and Vistara).

Among the ‘new’ carriers all but Air Costa have increased their market share in July 2016. While Vistara both have more than doubled their July 2015 passenger volumes with triple digit MoM growth. But Vistara for the first time lost market share as it slipped from 2.8% in June 2016 to  2.6% in July 2016. Air Pegasus which had grounded all its operations since late July, has captured 0.2% market share. TruJet, which recently completed its first year of operations on 12 July 2016, has captured 0.3% market share in July 2016.

Vistara for the second straight month claimed the top position in the on-time performance (OTP) chart after a gap of two months when it slipped to second or third position. Earlier it had a dream run for eight straight months when it was on the top position. Though DGCA didn't publish AirAsia India's OTP report for Delhi and Bengaluru where the carrier operates out of four metro airports but according to individual airport OTP report of those two airports AirAsia India failed to maintain its leadership position where it was for last two months. SpiceJet has significantly improved its OTP figures as it came second and positioned very close to Jet Airways and others. SpiceJet came first in Mumbai, India's most congested metro airport. And GoAir came at the bottom which has more network exposure to Mumbai. 

Passenger load factors taken a hit compared to previous months across most airlines as an early onset of monsoon season ends the peak tourist season by mid-June. But with no surprise SpiceJet once again had topped the PLF chart with 92% in July 2016 with this SpiceJet had reported more than 90% PLF for 15 straight months. And it has become the king of loads in Indian domestic aviation sector. Thanks to their frequent 'sales', not just SpiceJet, all low-cost airlines have performed much better than their full-service competitors with four among the top five positions being occupied by them, Jet Airways was the only full-service carrier present in the top five.