Air traffic grows 10% in 2014

NEW DELHI: Give low fares and Indians will fly like never before. The constant flash sales by SpiceJet last year, which forced other carriers to follow suit, has led to a record 6.7 crore people flying within India in 2014. In December, 64.4 lakh flyers took off within the country, possibly the highest ever number of people flew in a month.
But SpiceJet, which started the fare war, saw itself running out of cash by November, which led to aircraft leasors repossessing many of its Boeing 737 aircraft.Since November, the airline saw its market share fall. In December 2014, its market share was 10.4%, down from 20.4% in July. The low cost carrier is now headed for a change of ownership with co-founder Ajay Singh back in the cockpit.
SpiceJet had started cutting flights since mid-November. Not surprising, it topped the chart in December too with almost 32% flight cancellations.
While SpiceJet saw the most dramatic change of fortunes last year, Air India’s operational performance remains the government’s biggest challenge. In December, 2014, AI (domestic) saw the lowest on-time performance at four metro airports among big airlines. Only 59.8% of its flights took off on-time. The list of punctual airlines last month was headed by IndiGo (77.1%), followed by GoAir (73.4%), Jet (60.9%) and SpiceJet (64.2%).
“The aviation ministry has handled the SpiceJet crisis well and the low cost carrier may fly out of turbulence under the new owner. But, AI’s operations remain an unmet challenge for the government. Its on time performance is a big problem which no one seems to have an answer to,” said an airline official.