core sector communique

Civil Aviation Minister Ch. Ajit Singh Asks Air India to Work Out Plan to Raise its Share in Domestic Passenger Market

Union Minister of Civil Aviation Ch. Ajit Singh has asked Air India to submit to him in a week’s time a plan to enhance its share in the domestic passenger market. The detailed plan has to include month-wise targets of market share alongwith corresponding strategy to achieve these targets for the next one year. While noting that the share of Air India in the domestic passengers carried by Indian Schedule Airlines has been maintained at the level of 18.2% (same as for July’12), the Minister has emphasized that a number of efforts have to be made by Air India to regain its number one position in terms of market share. He has asked Air India to come out with innovative and customer focused strategies to achieve optimum utilisation of all planes and also maximum utilisation of each plane. As per passenger traffic data submitted by various domestic airlines, the number of passengers carried by them were 398.21 lakhs between January-August 2012 as against 396.31 lakhs during the corresponding period of the previous year showing the passenger traffic growth of +0.5%. The total domestic passengers carried by the scheduled domestic airlines for the month of August 2012 were 43.69 lakhs. The total domestic passengers carried by the scheduled domestic airlines in the month of July 2012 were 45.37 lakhs. The break-up for the month of August 2012 is as follows: Air India – 7.94 lakhs, Jet Airways –8.16 lakhs, Jet Lite – 2.85 lakhs, IndiGo – 12.05 lakhs, Spice Jet – 8.07 lakhs, Go Air – 3.24 lakhs, Kingfisher – 1.38 lakhs, Religare- 0.001 lakhs. The market share of scheduled domestic airlines for the month of August 2012 is as follows: Air India-18.2%, Jet Airways-18.7%, JetLite-6.5%, IndiGo-27.6%, Spice Jet- 18.5%, Go Air- 7.4% and Kingfisher- 3.2%.