Low fares helped Indian carriers sell 674 lakh seats in 2014

Domestic air traffic grew by 9.7 per cent last year compared to 2013, driven by a series of discounted ticket offers by the Indian airlines, according to official data released on Monday.

Indian airlines together carried 673.83 lakh passengers in the previous year as against 614.26 flown by them in 2013, latest data released by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) showed.

Of this, private airlines carried 549.58 lakh passengers or 81.6 per cent of the total passenger traffic.

The share of the national carrier Air india stood at 18.4 per cent as it transported 124.25 lakh passengers during the reporting period.

Private budget carrier IndiGo continues its domination in the domestic market, having flown 214,25 lakh passengers during the January-December 2014 period and cornered a 31.8 per cent market share in this period.

As against this, Naresh Goyal-owned Jet Airways together with its subsidiary JetLite clocked 21.7 per cent market share, by carrying 146.65 lakh passenger in the reporting period.

Air India stood a third with a market share of 18.4 per cent (after IndiGo and Jet Airways and JetLite combined) while budget carrier SpiceJet cornered 17.4 per cent of the total domestic passenger traffic in 2014, having flown 117.40 lakh passengers during the period.

Another budget airline GoAir managed to get 9.2 per cent of the market pie as it transported 62.02 lakh passengers in 2014.

On a month-on month basis, the domestic passenger traffic grew by a healthy 15.29 per cent to 64.40 lakh passengers in December last year as compared to 55.86 lakh passengers flown by the Indian carriers in 2013, DGCA data said.

All seven domestic carriers including AirAsia India and regional airline Air Coasta also reported a higher seat factor in December 2014 as compared to November on account of holiday season, according to DGCA data.

Load or seat factor is a measure of how much of an airline's passenger carrying capacity is used or average percentage of seats filled in an aircraft.

While Air India seat factor rose to 85.9 per cent in December as against 76.9 per cent in November, IndiGo clocked 88.8 per cent in the month as compared to 78.6 per cent in November 2014. Jet Airways also reported a high seat factor at 89 per cent in December 2014 as against 83.8 per cent in November 2014.