New Delhi/Mumbai, Jul 23 (IANS): Air fare normalisation and additional capacity led to air passenger traffic growing in June, sector experts said on Monday.

The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) data has shown that air passenger traffic rose 6.19 per cent to 1.2 crore in June from 1.13 crore reported for the corresponding month of the previous fiscal.

In May, the air passenger traffic growth rate had inched up by 2.79 per cent to 1.21 crore on a year-on-year basis.

As per the data, January-June passenger traffic grew 3.21 per cent to 7.06 crore from 6.84 crore ferried during the corresponding period of the previous year.

"Airlines have introduced new aircraft to fill the reduction in air capacity on account of the shutdown of Jet Airways, leading to rationalisation of airfares on multiple routes," said Sharat Dhall, COO(B2C), Yatra.com.

"The sale announcement by airlines have further reduced fares leading to growth returning to the market and we expect this positive momentum to continue."

According to Aloke Bajpai, CEO and Co-founder, ixigo: "The uptick in traffic for June can be attributed to domestic and international airlines launching new routes, which have helped in bridging the capacity gap created in the Jet aftermath."

"A majority of travellers also postponed their summer travel plans this year to off peak months of June-July which can be another reason behind this growth. While we can see airfares of some routes normalising, resetting the capacity to what it was a year back will still take time."

In terms of market share, the data showed that IndiGo led the industry with the highest market share of 48.1 per cent, followed by SpiceJet (15.6 per cent), Air India (12.9 per cent), and GoAir (11.1 per cent).

AirAsia India had a market share of 6.4 per cent, followed by Vistara (5.4 per cent) and Turbo Megha (0.5 per cent).

Jet Airways, which suspended its operations on April 17, had a market share of 0.8 per cent.