New Delhi, April 21 (IANS) India's domestic carriers ferried 24.03 percent more passengers in the first quarter of the current calendar year -- 23.03 million, against 18.55 million in the like quarter of last year, official data showed on Thursday.
Data released by the Ministry of Civil Aviation also showed that IndiGo was the dominant airline during the period with a market share of 37 percent, followed by Jet Airways with 18.2 percent. State-run Air India was third with 15.4 percent, and SpiceJet followed next with 13 percent.
In terms of ontime performance measured from four metro airports, new private carrier Vistara was first with a 91.5 percent score, followed by 86.8 percent for IndiGo, 84.1 percent for SpiceJet and 83 percent for another new carrier Air Asia -- which served only Delhi and Bangalore.
Air India was placed 6th, while Jet and JetLite were last.
During the period under review, 1,109 passengers were denied boarding for various reasons and got a compensation of Rs.34.73 lakh. Cancellations affected 6,858 passengers, leading to Rs.45.85 lakh in compensation, while delays affected 48,696 resulting in Rs.52.41 lakh for redressal.
Even though Air India has lost its dominant position to private carriers, in terms of complaints it still tops the list with as many as 280 of them in the first quarter, followed by 211 for Jet Airways and its budget arm, and 120 for IndiGo.
Among larger scheduled ailines, the least -- two -- complaints were for Vistara, 11 for Air Asia and 41 for SpiceJet.
The overall cancellation rate for the domestic scheduled carriers, both larger and the smaller ones was 1.29 percent in March. But that does not present the true picture -- it was as high as 40.34 percent for Air Pegasus, and nil for Vistara and Air Asia.
For others, it was 18.28 percent for Air Costa, 2.3 percent for Jet Airways, 1.05 percent for JetLite, 0.9 percent for Air India, 0.29 percent for SpiceJet, 0.21 percent for Go Air, 0.13 percent for True Jet, and 0.06 percent for IndiGo.
