Air passenger traffic up by 25% in August as against July: Icra – Times of India

MUMBAI: The Indian aviation industry witnessed a recovery in domestic passenger traffic in August 2020, with a sequential growth (over July 2020) of about 25% to add up to 26 lakh passengers, said ICRA, an independent credit rating agency. The bad news though is that the industry witnessed a Y-o-Y decline of about 77%.
“The capacity deployment in August 2020 at about 33% (vis-a-vis August 2019) is rather a slow uptick despite recommencement of operations over three months ago. However, it was an increase over the 27% capacity deployed in July 2020,” it said.
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Kinjal Shah, vice president, ICRA, said: “The number of flights departing has also gradually increased from 416 on Day 1 to 1,156 on Day 101 (September 2, 2020). For August 2020, the average daily departures were about 930, significantly lower than the average daily departures of 2,846 in August 2019, though better than 780 in July 2020. The average number of passengers per flight during August 2020 was 98, as against an average of 133 passengers per flight in August 2019.”
Thus, it is expected that the domestic aviation industry operated at a passenger load factor (PLF) of about 63% in August 2020, as against 85.1% in August 2019, that too on a very low capacity, Shah added.
“The PLF for August 2020 has sequentially improved from about 55% in July 2020 despite the increase in capacity deployment by about 19%. Overall, from May 25, 2020 till August 31, 2020, the domestic passenger traffic has been more than 7 million.”