The annual air passenger traffic in 2022 was still 14.5% lower than the air traffic seen in the pre-covid year of 2019. 

IndiGo remained the largest airline in 2022 with 56.1% market share in the domestic aviation industry and also retained the crown in on-time performance with 88.6% punctuality rate in December. The regulator calculates the on-time performance of airlines at the airports of Bengaluru, Mumbai, Delhi and Hyderabad for the punctuality list.  

The Tata Group airlines, Vistara and Air India closely followed IndiGo in time-keeping with an on-time performance of 81.5% and 81.4%. While the third airline from Tata umbrella Air Asia retained the fourth position but performed poorly with only 65.2% flights on time in December as compared to 75% in November. AirAsia was followed by state-run Alliance Air with on-time performance of 63.5%. SpiceJet and GoFIRST flights were the least punctual in December with only 56.9% flights and 49.7% flights on time respectively. Ironically, SpiceJet and GoFIRST were the best performers in capacity utilisation. 

The demand in a traditionally strong quarter for travel was visible in the passenger load factor (PLF) or capacity utilisation at all airlines. All carriers registered a rise in the passenger load factor in December.  The PLF was highest for SpiceJet at 92.7% in December as compared to 92% in November and that of GoFIRST increased to 92.6% as compared to 91.3%. For Vistara, the capacity utilisation was up at 91.9% from 91.7% earlier and it rose to 89.8% from 87.3% for AirAsia and to 89.3% from 85.7% for Air India. IndiGo’s capacity utilisation rose to 87.5% from 86.9% in the previous month. Akasa registered a PLF of 83.8% as compared to 79.2% earlier. 

In market share, while SpiceJet ended 2021 as the second largest airline of India, the position has been taken over by Vistara at the end of 2022 with a 9.2% share. The joint venture between Tata Sons and Singapore Airlines has been the second largest airline in India since July 2022. Wadia Group-run GoFIRST secured a 8.8% share in the overall air traffic data for 2022. SpiceJet and Air India attained 8.7% share each, followed by AirAsia at 6.2%. The youngest airline Akasa Air, which started operations in August 2022, ended the year with 0.6% stake in the total yearly air traffic.