Domestic air passenger growth slows down in February: DGCA

New Delhi: The number of passengers flying domestic airlines dropped to 113.49 lakh in February compared to 125.08 lakh in the previous month, according to data released by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA).

Private carriers flew 98.96 lakh passengers in February compared to 109.78 lakh in January. The number of passengers flown by government-owned Air India also dropped to 14.53 lakh as against 15.30 lakh in the same period.

Taken together in the first two months of calendar 2019, however, the number of flyers was 238.56 lakh compared to 222.09 lakh in January and February of 2018, marking a growth of 7.42 per cent.

The overall cancellation rate of scheduled domestic airlines for last month was 1.89 per cent, data showed. Air India had the highest cancellation of 8.15 per cent followed by Air Asia 2.46 per cent and Jet Airways 2.31 per cent.

Low-cost airline SpiceJet had the highest passenger load factor of 94 per cent in February, followed by GoAir at 92.6 per cent, AirAsia India at 91.8 per cent, Vistara at 89.1 per cent and IndiGo at 88.4 per cent.

"The passenger load factor in February has shown increasing trend primarily due to airlines offering promotional fares, resulting in increasing demand," said the aviation regulator.

Jet Airways, with mounting debts and nearly one-third of its fleet grounded, too recorded a passenger load factor of 89.4 per cent.