Praveena Sharma/DNA India

• Number of domestic passengers down for first time in 3 years

Bangalore, Jul 12: Soaring airfares have finally taken a toll on domestic air traffic figures. For the first time in the last three years, the number of passengers carried by domestic scheduled airlines slipped in June.

This June, local airlines ferried fewer people than they did in June 2007. Civil aviation ministry statistics showed that the number of air passengers last month fell 4% to 35.06 lakh from about 36.5 lakh in June last year even though domestic carriers were operating more aircraft this year than they did last.

Low-cost carrier SpiceJet had a fleet of 18 aircraft this June against 11 last year. Its rival IndiGo doubled its fleet from 9 to 18 in the same period.

Other airlines too were flying more aircraft now.

Since December 2007, the year-on-year growth in demand for domestic air travel has been tumbling. Passenger growth has slowed consistently from 27.1% in November 2007 to 6.29% in May 2008. This is the first time it has moved into the negative range. June also saw a month-on-month fall of 15% in air traffic from 41.16 lakh passengers in May.

“The monthly decline in the number of flyers in June from May is not unusual. We see air traffic drop during this time every year but year-on-year fall has been seen for the first time in the last three years. This is primarily due to higher fares. Capacity rationalisation could also have affected air travel,” said an executive of a no-frills airline.

The rise in air traffic during the April-June quarter over the January-March quarter was also a meagre 2.89% from 111.90 lakh passengers to 115.12 lakh.

In June, Air India (domestic) managed the highest market share gain of 1.6%. From 14.8% in May, the state-owned carrier increased its market share to 16.4%.

Another major gainer was Jet Airways, which added 0.7% to its market share, up from 20.5% to 21.2%. IndiGo and Paramount too upped their share by 0.3% and 0.2% to 12% and 1.3%, respectively.

Low-cost carrier Deccan was the biggest loser at 1.2 percentage points. JetLite, Kingfisher Airlines, SpiceJet and GoAir too saw their shares in the aviation pie shrink by 0.5, 0.1, 0.4 and 0.8 percentage points, respectively, in June.

Budget airline IndiGo’s market share of 12% flew closer to Deccan’s 12.8%.

Interestingly, IndiGo managed to grab this share with just 18 aircraft while Deccan has a fleet of 43 (22 ATRs and 21 Airbus).

The load factor also remained subdued in June, with most airlines, except Paramount Air (80%), registering between 60% and 71% load.