Air traffic growth in India saw a growth of 18.6% in 2018 over the previous years with airlines carrying 1389.76 lakh (138.98 million) passengers in 2018 as compared to 1171.76 lakh passengers in 2017. The highlight of the year was that every airline which started the year remained operational unlike the previous years when Air Costa, Air Pegasus and Air Carnival had shut operations. However, 2018 signaled hard times with loses being recorded by all listed carriers in Q3-CY18 / Q2-FY18-19. While Air Deccan, Air Odisha and Zoom Air are down, but not yet out, 2019 will be full of challenges, like any other year. Add to that, this being an election year – policy changes will take a backseat.
These numbers came on the backdrop of a stellar December when most airlines recorded maximum passengers carried in a month in 2018. As per data published by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), the country saw 17.69% more departures than 2017. The capacity by Available Seat KiloMeters (ASKM) was up by 18.52%, indicating a clear trend that the increase in passengers was due to the capacity deployed by the carriers.
Re-Cap of predictions for 2018
The Hits – from Network Thoughts outlook 2018
- Impact of Oil affecting profitability
- Headwinds for IndiGo & not sticking to a model of either A320 or ATR on a route but mix mode operations
- Jet Airways major network changes on the domestic front at airports outside the metros
- GoAir starts international flights
- Growth below 20%. Network Thoughts had predicted a growth of 16%
The misses
- Vistara and AirAsia India did not start international services in 2018
The year gone by
- The market further moved to dominance by Low Cost Carriers with 68.1% traffic being carrier by LCCs as compared to 65.4% in 2017 and 63.8% in 2016
- IndiGo inducted its first A321neo after having converted 125 A320neo to the A321neo
- Jet Airways and Spicejet inducted the B737 MAX8
- GoAir has more A320neo than the A320ceo
- Vistara placed its order for additional narrow body and wide body aircraft
The larger India Market Outlook 2019 will be available this year for INR 250, from Monday 4th February. The Market Outlook will give summary of Departures, Capacity, Passengers and Market Share for IndiGo, Spicejet, GoAir, AirAsia India, Air India, Jet Airways and Vistara. It also contains the outlook for each of these airlines and analytics of how the capacity and passenger count has moved for a period of three years.
Please fill in the form below to receive an invoice to make the payment via Credit / Debit card through secure channels of Paypal after which the copy will be emailed starting Monday evening.
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