For the second month in a row, low-cost airline IndiGo emerged as the biggest in terms of passenger market share in the domestic market. According to the data for August released by the civil aviation ministry on Tuesday, IndiGo carried 27.6% of the total 43.69 lakh domestic passengers.
The airline pipped Jet Airways in July by grabbing the highest market share and has maintained that position in August.
Loss-making and troubled Kingfisher Airline slumped further with its market share reducing to 3.2% against 3.4% during July. The huge debt the company has and a very low market share has led to the view among analysts that Kingfisher would not be able to get a foreign partner despite the government recently allowing foreign carriers to pick up to 49% stake in Indian carriers.
However, promoter Vijay Mallya has been banking on this measure to revive his ailing airline.
State-owned Air India was not able to improve its share in August compared to July, prompting civil aviation minister Ajit Singh to issue a warning, asking it to shape up. Air India continued to maintain its market share at 18.2%, same as July’s level.
Singh has asked the airline to submit a plan indicating how is it going to enhance its market share in terms of passengers carried in a week. “The detailed plan has to include month-wise targets of market share along with a corresponding strategy to achieve these targets for the next one year,” the aviation ministry statement said.
Singh has also asked Air India to come out with innovative and customer focused strategies to achieve optimum utilisation of all planes and also maximum utilisation of each plane. Jet Airways, which lost out to IndiGo, had a market share of 25.2% during August.
The domestic carriers carried 43.69 lakh passengers in August, marginally lower than 45.37 lakh in July. The passenger traffic, however, grew 0.5% during January-August at 398.21 lakh against 396.31 lakh in the same period last year.Other airlines such as SpiceJet and GoAir had a market share of 18.5% and 7.4%.
