As per recent data published by Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), it was revealed that Mumbai airport is India’s most unpunctual private-run airport as 45% of all flights (either coming in or going out) were delayed there.
Delhi, which is India’s most busiest airport with 55 million flyers in 2016, scored fairly well, compared to Mumbai here.
As per DGCA, there were a total of 3,00,000 passengers stranded for more than 4 hours, across Indian airports in 2016. The reason of delay can include technical faults, as well weather related issues such as fog.
India has a total of 4 privately run airports: Mumbai, Delhi, Hyderabad and Bengaluru. Out of them, Mumbai had the worst performance with 45% of all flights getting delayed. In Hyderabad, 20% of the flights were delayed, while in Bengaluru, 34% and in Delhi, 37% of all flights were delayed.
Sudhakar Reddy, National president of the Air Passengers’ Association of India (APAI) said, “Mumbai, the cradle of aviation in India, is sadly jostling for space to operate flights. As a result, hardly any airline wants to add flights there,”
Note here, that between November 30th and December 3rd this year, around 900 flights were delayed due to various factors (which include weather conditions) as only 64% of flights were on time.
Domestic Flyers Swell To 10 Crore
Meanwhile, some positive news from DGCA numbers: Domestic flyers have almost touched the 10 crore mark in 2016, as total of 9.98 crore passengers flew between January-December 2016, up from 8.19 crore in 2015.
This is a healthy increase of 21% year on year.
Civil Aviation Minister Ashok Gajapathi Raju shared these data on Twitter, as he Tweeted:
December witnessed a maximum number of flyers at 1 crore passengers.
Besides, a dip of 8% in turbine fuel in 2016 also helped aviation sector, as airlines charged lesser charges last year. Almost 14% less airfare was charged in 2016, compared to 2015.
Among domestic airlines, low-cost carrier IndiGo continued to be the market leader with 39.6% share, which was 2.6% more than last year.
SpiceJet’s market share increased to 12.7% from 11.6% last year, new entrant Vistara captured 2.6% market share, and AirAsia had a share of 2.4%. Overall, 63.8% of all domestic flyers used low-cost airlines such as IndiGo, SpiceJet and GoAir.
At the same time, market share of full-service airlines Air India, Jet Airways and GoAir decreased in 2016.