India domestic air travel sees 6.34% decline in August, DGCA data shows

Domestic airlines had carried 129.47 lakh passengers in August 2025, showing a decline in traffic during the month under review. The fall also pushed the year-to-date growth rate into negative territory, although the decline for January-August remained marginal.

“Passengers carried by domestic airlines during January-August 2026 were 1,105.30 lakh as against 1,107.26 lakh during the corresponding period of the previous year, thereby registering an annual growth of -0.18 per cent and monthly (August 2026 vs August 2025) growth of -6.34 per cent,” Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) said.

IndiGo loses market share, Air India Group gains

IndiGo continued to account for the largest share of India’s domestic aviation market in August, but its market share fell to 65 per cent from 67.4 per cent in July.

Air India Group, meanwhile, increased its share to 26.7 per cent in August from 24 per cent a month earlier, gaining 2.7 percentage points. Akasa Air retained a 5.5 per cent market share during the month.

SpiceJet’s share also declined, falling to 1.2 per cent in August from 1.6 per cent in July, according to the DGCA figures.

The changes in market shares came as the overall domestic passenger market contracted during August compared with the same month last year.

IndiGo leads on-time performance in August

IndiGo recorded the highest on-time performance among scheduled domestic airlines at the 10 major airports during August, with 91.5 per cent of its flights operating on time.

Akasa Air followed with an OTP of 90.5 per cent, while Air India Group posted an on-time performance of 83.9 per cent.

The overall cancellation rate for scheduled domestic airlines stood at 1.39 per cent in August.

The DGCA data shows that while domestic air traffic remained broadly stable on a cumulative basis during the first eight months of 2026, passenger volumes in August registered a sharper year-on-year decline.