A DGCA report has shown that in the month of May only 61% of SpiceJet’s flights departed on time from India’s four biggest airports, namely Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru and Hyderabad. This has fallen from the figure of 70% which was reported in April. SpiceJet reportedly operates about 250 flights in a day, Bloomberg reported.
India’s second-largest carrier Air India slid from being second in punctuality to fifth, with almost twice as many flight delays in May as compared to April. In all of this, Akasa Air was the most on-time. However, its performance has shown a drop. Akasa Air’s 93% flights departed on time. India’s largest carrier IndiGo saw 90% of its flights depart on time in May. Vistara stood fourth with 89.5% of its flights departing on time, while only 85% of Air Asia’s flights were punctual.
Surge in demand
India has been witnessing a surge in passenger traffic. Post COVID-19, there has been a strong urge for traveling amongst the people globally. In India, the case happens to be no different. The domestic passenger traffic in India jumped by over 15% to 13.2 million in May as compared to April. As the number of passengers continues to surge, the airlines are faced with issues that have led to grounding of their flights.
Issues facing the Indian airlines
The issues with Pratt and Whitney engines have hit the global headlines. In India too this issue has led to the grounding of several flights. Besides this, the weather too has been harsh on the airline industry. A recent example of this would be 350 Air India passengers who were stranded en route to New Delhi from London. They spent hours stranded at Jaipur airport. The airline’s pilot timed out after clocking the maximum work hours allowed as everyone waited for New Delhi’s weather to clear.
SpiceJet has also fallen victim to financial challenges. The airline reportedly has not made money for four years and lost $40 billion in that period. It also delayed releasing its latest financial year results. A good number of its aircraft were grounded at the end of May.
A SpiceJet spokesperson said the airline is “striving hard to continuously improve performance on all aspects, including our on-time performance”, Bloomberg reported.
While India is witnessing flights getting delayed, here is a figure to draw comparison with delays in countries like the US and the USK. In India around 15% of flight departures were delayed from January to June 20, while 30% of flights in the UK and 20% in the US were delayed, Bloomberg reported citing data obtained from FlightAware.