Domestic air traffic increased by 6.12% to 161.3 million passengers in January- December 2024 according to the data from the Directorate General of Civil Aviation. This comes after a significant year-on-year growth of 23.6% in 2023. Airlines are expanding their fleet as well as networks to meet the rising air travel demand in the country, which is one of the largest growing civil aviation markets globally.

India Global Aviation Limited (IndiGo), India’s largest airline dominated the market with 99.90 million customers and a whopping 61.9% market share.

Air India is at second place with 26.48 million customers and 16.4% market share. Earlier in October 2024, AIX Connect merged with AIR India and on November 11 Vistara merged with Air India. The Air India Group which comprises of Air India, Vistara and AIX Connect carried 45.8 million passengers in 2024, up from 39.49 million in 2023.

On-time Performance declined in December, IndiGo had the highest OTP of 73.4% followed by Air India at 67.6%, Akasa Air at 62.7% Spice Jet at 61.5% and Alliance Air at 55.6%. The data about On-Time Performance is collated from the four metro airports viz. Bangalore, Delhi, Hyderabad and Mumbai.

In terms of cancellations for the month of December, scheduled domestic carriers stood at 1.07%. Fly Big had the highest cancellation rate at 19.23% and Air India had the lowest cancellation rate at 0.31%. This led to 67,622 passengers being affected, with airlines spending Rs 1.26 crore on compensation. Additionally, 2,79,985 passengers experienced flight delays costing airlines Rs 3.78 crore in facilitation.

The Y-o-Y growth of 6.12% is slightly lower than the growth projected by the rating agency. The government is committed to nurturing the growth potential with supportive policies. The number of operational airport has increased from 74 in 2014 to 157 in 2024 with a goal to increase it to 350-400 by 2047. The Regional Connectivity Scheme- UDAN (Ude Desh Ke Aam Nagrik) has had several successful iterations over the last seven years connecting underserved and unserved regions of India. Nearly 1.43 crore people have availed the benefits of the scheme.