Indian domestic traffic down 13% in 2009 Q1; international demand also down

Jet Airways and Kerala Tourism, Department of Tourism, Government of Kerala, recently announced the launch of ‘Jet2Kerala’, a new domestic travel initiative. Sudheer Raghavan, Chief Commercial Officer, Jet Airways, said: “Jet Airways has always sought to promote tourism both internationally, as well as within India, by leveraging its unmatched pan-India and growing international network. We are delighted to partner with Kerala Tourism to launch our new Jet2Kerala initiative, as part of our ongoing efforts to boost domestic travel and tourism.”

India’s domestic traffic continued to fall during the first three months of 2009 with passenger numbers on domestic flights down 15% in January, 9% in February and 15% in March.

Source: Airports Authority of India

A few airports bucking the trend in March included Amritsar (+16.3%), Srinigar (+9.7%), Nagpur (+3.9%), Pune (+1.8%) and Guwahati (+1.0%). Among the major airports domestic traffic was down 27.6% at Bangalore and down 24.9% at Hyderabad.

International growth disappears

International traffic which continued to grow all through 2008 showed marginal growth in January before declining in both February and March.

Source: Airports Authority of India

In March international traffic was down just under 2%, or around 50,000 passengers, which was almost the same as the decline in Mumbai’s international traffic. Delhi (+0.9%), Hyderabad (+5.7%) and Cochin (+5.9%) all continued to experience growth in international demand.

Airports handled 109 million passengers in last 12 months

For the period April 2008 to March 2009 India’s airports handled 108.9 million passengers, a reduction of 6.9% from the previous 12 month period. India’s top six airports for total traffic are Mumbai (23.4 million), Delhi (22.8 million), Chennai (9.8 million), Bangalore (8.8 million), Kolkata (7.0 million) and Hyderabad (6.2 million).

Kingfisher launched Kolkata-Dhaka services last week. It is the first time the airline has launched international flights from Kolkata. The daily service is operated using an ATR72.

Kingfisher most domestic passengers; MDLR has best load factor

According to figures published by the Indian civil aviation ministry India’s airlines carried some 9.7 million domestic passengers in the first three months of 2009. Kingfisher leads the way with 2.68 million giving it a market share of 27.6%. Combining Jet Airways (1.74 million) and JetLite (0.72 million) gives Jet a market share of 25.4%. IndiGo with 13.7% is still ahead of Spicejet (12.2%) among the pure LCCs.

MDLR, with just 0.4% of the market, may only operate three Avro RJs but it has the highest reported load factor (85.1%) of any Indian airline in the first quarter of 2009. The only other airline surpassing the 80% market was another smaller niche carrier, Paramount, which has a modest 2.1% share of the domestic market.

Source: Ministry of Civil Aviation

Among India’s international airlines Jet Airways and JetLite both achieved at least 75% average loads. Kingfisher’s new international services are so far filling around two-thirds of all their seats.