India's civil aviation sector remained unaffected by the currency ban announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi last month; the domestic air traffic business posted double-digit for yet another month. Indian carriers flew 89.66 lakh (8.96 million) passengers in November 2016, marking a growth of 22.45 percent over the corresponding month last year. IndiGo with a market share of 42.1 percent, retained its market share.
The data was published by the regulator, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) on Monday.
It may be recalled that sectors that published volume data for November, such as automobiles, as well as broad indicators such as PMI, showed drop in business activity due to demonetisation-induced slowdown.
Highlights of the data
Low-cost carrier IndiGo (owned by Interglobe Aviation) saw its market share fall marginally to 42.1 percent in November from 42.6 percent in the preceding month. In absolute terms, the carrier flew 37.73 lakh passengers.
Full-service carrier Jet Airways increased its market share marginally to 14.9 percent from 14.7 percent in October this year.
State-owned Air India witnessed a fall to 12.9 percent from 13 percent in October 2016
Budget carrier SpiceJet also saw a insignificant drop to 12.8 percent from 12.9 percent in the previous month.
Other carriers such as GoAir, AirAsia India and Vistara saw their market share go up marginally.
Pasenger Load Factor (PLF) remained high for most of the carriers in November, with SpiceJet improving its PLF to 92.5 percent from 91.9 percent in October to retain its top slot. Most of the other carriers such as GoAir, IndiGo, Air India, Jet Airways also registered an increase in their PLF, according to the DGCA data.
January-November statistics
For the nine-month period ended November 2016, Indian carriers flew 903.36 lakh passengers, a growth of 23.1 percent over 733.82 lakh passengers last year.
Interglobe Aviation, SpiceJet and Jet Airways are listed entities, while the others are not listed on stock exchanges in India.
Interglobe Aviation closed 0.41 percent higher at Rs 831, Jet Airways ended 0.46 percent lower at Rs 359 while SpiceJet inched 0.33 percent lower to close at Rs 60 on the BSE on Monday.
The BSE Sensex closed 115 points lower at 26,374 while the NSE Nifty ended 23 points down at 8,115.
Top Sensex losers were Asian Paints, Sun Pharma and HDFC.
