Domestic air traffic down 11% in Jan-May

The financial slowdown hit passenger traffic in India with the number of air travellers dropping  by almost 11 per cent between January and May compared with that in the same period last year.

Even though a marginal increase was witnessed in passenger traffic last month, official figures released showed that the passengers carried by all airlines in the first five months of 2009 fell to 173.34 lakh (17.334 million) against 194.11 lakh (19.411 million) in the same period last year, thus registering a negative growth of 10.7 per cent.

Total passengers carried last month, however, went up to 39.29 lakh (3.929 million) from 33.15 lakh (3.315 million) in April this year, the statistics showed.

Kingfisher Airlines and its no-frill arm Kingfisher Red led the way flying 10.1 lakh (1.01 million) passengers, followed by Jet Airways and JetLite, which together carried 9.12 lakh (912,000) passengers. While Air India (Domestic) flew 6.9 lakh (690,000), all-business class carrier Paramount Airways carried 82,000.

Among the no-frill airlines, IndiGo took 5.4 lakh (540,000million) air travellers, followed by SpiceJet with 4.96 lakh (496,000) and GoAir 1.88 lakh (188,000).

The market share of all the scheduled domestic airlines either remained around the same or changed marginally compared to the April figures, the statistics showed.