Jet Air’s on-time performance soars to 89% in Feb

Jet Airways, Jetlite and GoAir were the only three domestic airlines that reported a month-on-month increase in seat factor (number of seats occupied against number of seats available) this February.

All other domestic airlines saw a marginal decline with overall domestic seat factor also declining owing to end of peak travel season.

As per data released by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), Jet’s seat factor was up to 76.5% (73.9%), JetLite’s to 80.2% (74.6%) and GoAir’s to 87.1% (83.3%) during the month.

The biggest decline, almost by 3 percentage points, was seen in Kingfisher’s seat factor at 83.6% (86.5%), followed by Air India at 68% (69.3%), SpiceJet at 81% (82.6%) and IndiGo at 87.6% (88.6%).

In terms of market share though, Kingfisher continued to rule the domestic skies, despite IndiGo snapping at its heels. While Vijay Mallya’s Kingfisher network carried almost one in five domestic passengers, with 19% market share in February, low fare IndiGo was not far behind at 18.7%. Jet Airways was also close behind IndiGo with 18% share of the market and Air India (domestic) was at the fourth place with 15.8% share. SpiceJet was a distant fifth at 13.8%, followed by Jetlite at 8.1% and then Go Air at 6.6%.

In a statement on Wednesday, though, Jet claimed market leadership when taken together with low fare subsidiary JetLite. “Jet Airways, together with JetLite, successfully retained its leadership position in the Indian Aviation sector with a dominant market share of 26.1%....Jet Airways carried 3.81 lakh international revenue paying passengers in the month of February 2011 with an overall seat factor of 81.1%. The airline also carried 8.24 lakh domestic revenue paying passengers with a seat factor of 76.5%,” the statement said.

But Jet’s passenger complaint record wasn’t so rosy, with the airline facing maximum complaints per 10,000 passengers at 4.1.

Though the number in itself is quite small, it compares poorly with Air India Domestic’s 1.1, which was surprisingly the topper in this category. Kingfisher saw 1.7 complaints, JetLite 2.1, GoAir 2.2, SpiceJet 2.8 and IndiGo 3.1.

In the on-time performance (OTP) area, Jet again topped with 9 out of 10 flights taking off on time. Jet’s OTP was the highest at 89.2%, followed by 88.7% for Kingfisher and 86.8% for IndiGo. The worst was SpiceJet, with almost one in four flights not operating on time and an OTP of just 73.9%. Air India domestic also had a similar record with 25% flights getting delayed and OTP of just 75.8%. One in five JetLite flights also could not fly on time at 80.6% OTP. GoAir’s OTP was bettter at 83.2%.