Indian aviation sector has witnessed strong growth in the recent quarter. As per latest figures released by Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), for domestic sectors, Indian aviation companies served 26 percent more passengers during April. Compared to 9.1 million passengers in April 2017, 11.5 million passengers traveled via air during April 2018.

Connectivity has increased among tier-2 and tier-3 cities across India. Indian government has planned major improvements to regional airports and aviation companies are witnessing growth for small cities.

Occupancy was more than 95 percent for SpiceJet (the airline offers aggressive fares on many routes), followed by Indigo at 91.9 percent occupancy. GoAir also managed impressive occupancy rate of 90%.

Indigo was on-time for 86.6 percent of its flights. SpiceJet and GoAir were also close at 86.1% on-time flights.

Indigo remained market leader with 39.8 percent market share followed by Jet Airways at 16.2 percent market share. SpiceJet has witnessed strong revival after change of management. The outlook for Indian aviation is strong, considering high growth in passenger traffic.

Commenting on DGCA data, Aloke Bajpai, ixigo CEO & Co-founder said, “With the onset of the holiday season, numerous airlines have been carrying out sales accompanied by additional discounts offered by OTAs and meta-search players such as ixigo. Owing to this, DGCA data indicates an increase of 26.05% in domestic flyer traffic from last year. As per DGCA data, a similar spike was also observed for the period between January and April when air passenger traffic went up by 24.41% as compared to the same time last year. This could be attributed to a slight drop in airfares. In April 2018, ixigo saw an overall growth of 3x in flight bookings as compared to April 2017. We anticipate this growth to continue throughout the holiday season.”