Domestic air passenger traffic shot up 29.31 per cent last month, the fastest rise in more than a year as low fares due to a sharp fall in jet fuel prices in the key summer vacation season led to a spike in air passengers.
The surge in air traffic also signals positive consumer and business sentiments in the country.
According to the data submitted by 10 domestic airlines, the total number of passengers carried in July stood at 6.74 million compared with 5.2 million in July 2014, as per aviation regulator Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA).
The growth in air passenger numbers also trumped the spike in traffic last September when it rose 27.82 per cent.
For the seven months period between January and July, air traffic grew 21.13 per cent to 45.5 million over the year-ago period.
Low cost carrier SpiceJet, which came out of the brink to post its second straight quarterly profit for the three months ended June 30, had the highest passenger load factor of 93.4 per cent last month, followed by another budget carrier Air Costa (81.7 per cent) and Go Air (81.2 per cent), DGCA data showed.
The two new airlines—AirAsia India and Vistara—posted load factor of 80.2 per cent and 60.3 per cent, respectively, in July.
IndiGo, the country's top airline that is in the queue to go float its IPO, posted a modest passenger load factor of 78.4 per cent.
