New Delhi: The Investment Information and Credit Rating Agency of India Limited (ICRA) on Friday said that “The Indian Aviation Industry has witnessed continued recovery in domestic passenger traffic in October. Indian Aviation Industry reported around 33 per cent growth which is around 52 lakh passengers.”
ICRA said that “On a year-on-year basis, however, the domestic travel demand declined 58 per cent and internationally the fall was 87 per cent”
On the growth of domestic air travel demand in India – ICRA added that “the capacity deployment in October 2020 at around 52 per cent over the same month last year, is a significant increase over the around 33 per cent capacity deployed in August and around 46 per cent capacity in September this year.”
In the last June month – The civil aviation ministry of India had permitted increasing the capacity to 45 per cent with effect from June 27 from a maximum of one-third at the time of resumption of domestic flights from May 25, which was further scaled up to 60 per cent from September 2.
As people are choosing air travel – The government expected 70-75 per cent growth in festive season.
The Vice President of ICRA – Kinjal Shah said that “The number of flights departing has also gradually increased from 416 on Day 1 to 1,749 on Day 156 (October 26, 2020). For October, the average daily departures were around 1,574, significantly lower than the average daily departures of 3,031 in October 2019, though better than around 1,311 in September 2020,”
On the passengers – she added that “The average number of passengers per flight during October 2020 was 106 as against an average of 131 passengers per flight in October 2019,”
Therefore, it is expected that the domestic aviation industry operated at a Passenger Load Factor (PLF) of around 68 per cent in October 2020, as against 83.6 per cent in October 2019, that too on a low capacity, Shah said in statement.
According to Shah, the PLF for October was higher than 63.2 per cent in September, despite the increase in capacity deployment by around 24 per cent.
As per ICRA “Under the Vande Bharat Mission, the international passenger traffic, both inbound and outbound, was 1096709 from May 7 to October 31.”
_Vinayak
