Around 4.82 passengers were affected due to delayed flights (beyond two hours) in January 2024, leading to Rs 3.69 crore facilitation cost for the airlines, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) monthly traffic data mentioned on Thursday.
During the same period, domestic passenger traffic jumped 4.69 percent in January to 1.31 crore as compared to January 2023, as per the airline regulator. The domestic passenger traffic was recorded at 1.25 crore in Jan last year.
Apart from delays, some 1,374 passengers were denied boarding in the previous month by the various carriers, resulting in Rs 1.28 crore compensation besides providing alternate flights and accommodation, refreshments, and meals, the DGCA data mentioned.
In addition, the airlines also shell out Rs 1.43 crore, offering refunds and re-bookings to the 68,362 passengers whose flights were cancelled in Jan last month, as per the DGCA data.
On the domestic passenger traffic front, domestic carrier IndiGo accounted for 60.2 percent or 79.09 lakh passengers, followed by Air India with a 12.2 percent market share at 15.97 lakh passengers during the month.
Rising companies by passengers
During January 2024, a total of 732 passenger-related complaints had been received by the scheduled domestic airlines, the DGCA data revealed. Further, the total number of complaints per 10,000 passengers carried for January 2024 was around 0.56 owing to various reasons.
As much as 54.8 percent of these complaints were related to flight problems, while 17.8 percent were on account of refunds, as per the DGCA data.
Besides, the data showed that 10.4 percent of the complaints were lodged due to baggage-related issues and another 4.7 percent over staff behavior.
Notably, Akasa Air, which commenced operations in August 2022, delivered the highest on-time performance from the four key metro airports — Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, and Hyderabad — with as much as 71.8 percent of its flights on average arriving and departing on time.