Domestic air passenger traffic declines 4.8% in July

In terms of operational performance, IndiGo recorded the highest on-time performance among major domestic airlines at the country’s 10 busiest airports during July at 91.2 per cent, followed by Akasa Air (90.8 per cent), the Air India Group (88.5 per cent), Alliance Air (76 per cent) and SpiceJet (34.6 per cent)

India’s domestic air passenger traffic moderated in July 2026 on a year-on-year basis as airlines continued calibrated capacity deployment despite resilient travel demand.According to data released by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), scheduled domestic airlines carried around 1.20 crore passengers during July, compared with around 1.26 crore passengers during the corresponding period of last year, a decline of about 4.8 per cent.Industry observers attributed the decline to the seasonal slowdown in travel as well as calibrated capacity deployment by airlines.Besides, the data showed that passenger load factors remained robust across most airlines, indicating healthy seat utilisation despite lower passenger traffic.Operational metricsAirline-wise, Akasa Air recorded the highest passenger load factor at 91.9 per cent, followed by SpiceJet (84.1 per cent), the Air India Group (83.2 per cent) and IndiGo (82.4 per cent).In terms of market share, IndiGo held its dominant position among domestic carriers after carrying 80.82 lakh passengers, accounting for 67.4 per cent of the market.Furthermore, the Air India Group — comprising Air India and Air India Express — accounted for a combined market share of 24 per cent after carrying 28.75 lakh passengers.Meanwhile, Akasa Air saw its market share decline to 5.5 per cent after carrying 6.65 lakh passengers.Other airlines such as SpiceJet accounted for a market share of 1.6 per cent, while Star Air, Fly91, Alliance Air and IndiaOne Air accounted for 0.7 per cent, 0.5 per cent, 0.4 per cent and less than 0.1 per cent respectively.In addition, the overall cancellation rate of scheduled domestic airlines stood at 0.62 per cent, with technical reasons accounting for the largest share of cancellations at 39.9 per cent, followed by operational reasons (27.4 per cent) and weather-related disruptions (22.7 per cent).Additionally, the DGCA data also showed that airlines received 2,196 passenger complaints, translating into around 1.83 complaints per 10,000 passengers carried. In terms of operational performance, IndiGo recorded the highest on-time performance (OTP) among major domestic airlines at the country’s 10 busiest airports at 91.2 per cent, followed by Akasa Air (90.8 per cent), the Air India Group (88.5 per cent), Alliance Air (76 per cent) and SpiceJet (34.6 per cent). Across airports, Chennai recorded the highest overall OTP at 96.7 per cent, followed by Bengaluru (94 per cent) and Hyderabad (92.4 per cent). The DGCA attributed the majority of flight delays to reactionary reasons, which accounted for 65 per cent of all delays, followed by operational and air traffic control constraints (7 per cent each), technical and weather-related factors (6 per cent each), passenger-related reasons (3 per cent), airport-related (2 per cent), ramp-related (1 per cent) and miscellaneous (3 per cent). Published on August 20, 2026