India's aviation sector continues to witness positive growth

Continuing an upward trend, India's domestic air traffic witnessed a 22 per cent growth between January and April this year with airlines carrying over 16.2 million  (1.62 crore) travellers.

Between January and April, domestic airlines carried around 1.62 crore passengers as against the 13.3 million (1.33 crore) during the same period last year.

This came against the backdrop of continued downward trends witnessed in the global aviation sector since it was hit by recession and experienced negative growth since 2008.

In contrast, the scheduled Indian airlines flew a total of 4.19 million (41.88 lakh) domestic passengers in April against 3.9 million (39.03 lakh) in March this year. Of these, Jet Airways and JetLite combined carried 1.8 million (10.84 lakh), Kingfisher 0.9 million (8.98 lakh), while Air India (domestic) remained at the third spot with 0.76 million (7.62 lakh) passengers.

Among the low cost carriers, 0.66 million (6.58 lakh) passenger preferred to fly with IndiGo, SpiceJet carried 0.53 million (5.27 lakh) and GoAir 0.25 million (2.46 lakh) while all-business airline Paramount Airways carried just 13,000 passengers during April, official figures showed.

Barring Kingfisher and Paramount Airways, all other airlines witnessed a growth in their market share in April in comparison to their shares in the month of March.

Kingfisher witnessed the biggest fall in its market share from 22.6 per cent in March to 21.4 per cent in April, while Paramount's share dipped from 1.6 per cent to a mere 0.3 per cent.

Market share of Jet Airways and JetLite combine remained almost same. Its share was 25.8 per cent in March which increased to 25.9 per cent.

Among the gainers, market share of troubled national carrier Air India (domestic) went up from 17.6 per cent in March to 18.2 per cent in April, while that of IndiGo went up from 15 per cent to 15.7 per cent.

Similarly, SpiceJet cornered a share of 12.6 per cent in April against 12 per cent in March and GoAir 5.9 per cent against 5.4 per cent, figures showed.