Full-service carrier Vistara whizzed past rivals SpiceJet and Go First, both of whom have grounded planes and cut flights, to become India’s No.2 carrier by market share in July.
The airline is Tata Sons’ joint venture with Singapore Airlines.
According to data from the aviation regulator, Vistara, which had a 7.5% market in January and around 9% in the subsequent months, climbed to 10.4% in July.
Go First carried 8.2% of the domestic passengers last month, while SpiceJet flew 8%.
SpiceJet and Go First have been forced to cut capacity, which helped Vistara overtake them in market share. After several technical snags in SpiceJet’s flights, the regulator ordered it to cut 50% of its approved capacity for the summer. GoAir grounded more than a fifth of its fleet, or over a dozen planes, due to engine supply problems.
The market share of the only other local full-service carrier, Air India, climbed to 8.4% from 7.5% in June, although it decreased from 10.2% in January.
All low-cost carriers except IndiGo lost market share.
The combined market share for the three Tata Group airlines – Air India, Vistara and AirAsia India – for July was 23.4%. IndiGo’s share was 2.5 times higher at 58.8%.
“Despite the challenges of the third wave of the pandemic, we were able to maintain a domestic market share of 9% throughout the last six months, flying over a million passengers (domestic + international) every month since March 2022,” Vistara chief executive Vinod Kannan said in an email to employees Thursday.
Since January, when Vistara sharply cut flights due to a rise in Covid cases, its number of domestic flights increased by 56%, till July, said a person in the know. Its number of aircraft deployed on domestic routes increased to 44 from 37, he said, adding the airline would now add one aircraft every month to its fleet of 53 small and large planes.
Air India too has been adding capacity recently.
“In the last two months, our narrow-bodied fleet in operation has increased to 54 from 45 planes,” said a person in the know of Air India’s operations. It has a narrow-bodied fleet of more than 70 planes. The remaining are grounded.
“Air India is leaving no stone unturned to bring back both its narrow-body and widebody aircraft back into service,” an airline spokesperson said separately. “For instance, till recently, we had 28 widebody aircraft that were operating but that number has now risen to 33. The entire process to make grounded aircraft serviceable has been expedited and soon most aircraft will be ready to operate.”
India’s airlines carried 9.7 million passengers on domestic routes in July, almost double from a year earlier but lower than the 10.5 million passengers ferried in June 2022.
