The Hindu: New Delhi: Sunday, September 16,
2018.
For every 10 seats available under the
government’s low-cost flying scheme, as many as seven were grabbed by
passengers since its launch last year, according to data accessed under the RTI
(Right to Information) Act.
Seat occupancy, also known as passenger
load factor, is an indicator of demand on a particular route.
Extrapolation of data sought by The Hindu
through a RTI application shows that as many 7.5 lakh seats were made available
for sale by eight airline operators, of which 5.24 lakh seats were sold. These
figures are for a period of 16 months between the first flight under the scheme
in April last year and until August 1, 2018.
So far, two rounds of bidding have taken
place for routes under the regional connectivity scheme (RCS) or UDAN (Ude Desh
Ka Aam Nagrik), which aims to take flying to the masses and enhance air
connectivity to Tier-1 and Tier-2 cities. A total of 428 routes were awarded to
17 airline and helicopter operators. Of these, eight airlines have started
flights on 96 routes, while helicopter services are yet to commence.
Airlines have to set aside 50% of the
total aircraft capacity for cheaper fares to be offered at the rate of Rs.2,500 per hour of flight, in return for which airlines are given a subsidy by the Centre
and the State government concerned.
The government data show that the three
airlines with the highest seat occupancy rate are low-cost carrier (81.4%),
regional airline TrueJet (70.7%) and Air India’s regional arm Alliance Air
(64.9%).
Among the major domestic carriers that
participated in the scheme in the second round are Jet Airways and IndiGo, with
seats sold at 59.2% and 45.6%, respectively.
The two carriers launched operations in
the second half of this year.
Zoom Air sold 56.4% of its total seats
and Air Deccan sold 53.4 %. At the bottom of the stack is Air Odisha, with a
mere 24% seats sold.
The five most successful routes under the
scheme in terms of the passenger load factor are Mumbai-Porbandar (93%),
Delhi-Kanpur- Delhi (91.5%), Mumbai-Kandla-Mumbai (91%), Delhi-Shimla-Delhi
(89.5%), Delhi-Adampur-Delhi (86%). Four of these routes are operated by
SpiceJet.
The routes that have flopped so far are
Shillong-Dimapur-Shillong (1%), Ahmedabad-Bhavnagar-Ahmedabad (11%),
Ahmedabad-Jamnagar-Ahmedabad (14%), Ahmedabad-Diu-Ahmedabad (19%) and
Gwalior-Indore-Gwalior (35%). Air Odisha serves four of these worst routes.
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