As the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) declared the Indian aviation domestic summary for July, it showed a drop in traffic month on month. July 2025 saw the domestic aviation industry cater to 1.26 crore passengers, nearly 3% lower than 1.29 crore passengers which the industry carried in July 2024. This has happened for the first time since January 2022, when January 2022 saw a lower growth than January 2021. However, the period from March 2020 onwards until the end of 2022 was marred by the pandemic and the various waves of the pandemic meant that the traffic was more aligned to the virus than the usual seasonality. Things have since changed. Prior to this, the Month on Month traffic had seen a decline in April 2019, when Jet Airways shut down.
The reduction comes a month after the deadly crash of AI171 at Ahmedabad and while the immediate aftermath did not see any drop in loads, the group (Air India and Air India Express) has seen a sequential drop of load factors to 78.6% in July, which was 81.5% in June, a drop of 2.9% Most airlines saw a drop, with IndiGo seeing a drop of 1.3%, Akasa Air seeing a drop of 1.2%, while SpiceJet saw a drop of 1%.
IndiGo gains market share, maintains OTP lead
IndiGo has further gained market share over the previous month with the market share at 65.2%, followed by Air India group 26.2%, a drop of 0.9% over the previous month. IndiGo gained 0.7% sequentially. Akasa Air saw its market share go up from 5.3% last month to 5.5% while SpiceJet gained 0.1%, yet stands at 2%.
IndiGo continues to maintain its On Time Performance lead with 91.4% flights being on-time at six metro airports. This was followed by Akasa Air (85.3%) and Air India group (82.6%). Alliance Air was at the bottom at 54.8%, with SpiceJet at 62.7%.
Amongst the airports, Bengaluru had the best performance at 93.8%, while Mumbai was the worst amongst the six at 82.3%.
Tail Note
The passenger numbers being down is a seasonal shift in traffic. The July to September quarter is generally the weakest quarter of the year owing to schools starting and the monsoon season kicking in across the country leading to a drop in traffic. This year, IndiGo has curtailed its flights and additionally Air India has also scaled down operations as an aftermath of AI171 leading to a larger curtailment of schedule. The lower availability / deployment has led to lower passengers.
August so far has held on to being slightly higher than August 2024 and going forward airlines are adding capacity in domestic skies. The year 2024 saw the highest ever traffic in Indian skies, with the previous best being 2023. In 2024, the annual growth of 6.9% but in 2025 the growth so far has been 5.9%, slightly lower than the previous year. Will the October to December period change this?
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