New Delhi: Indian airlines have struggled to stay punctual in 2024, with most carriers falling short of the 80 percent benchmark for on-time performance at the four metro airports in the first 10 months of the year.
The rare exceptions to this were Akasa Air, which managed 80 percent or above on-time performance in three months, and Indigo, Vistara, and AIX Connect managing 80 percent or above on-time performance in one month each. However, on a consistent basis, even these airlines fared poorly.
According to government data, in the nine-month period from January-September, six major airlines—Akasa Air, Vistara, Indigo, AIX Connect, Alliance Air, Air India and Spice Jet—saw a total of 3,54,775 departures from the four metro airports of Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru and Hyderabad, out of which nearly 31 percent or 1,09,607 flights were delayed.
In a written reply to a question in the Rajya Sabha, Minister of State for Civil Aviation Murlidhar Mohol noted that a flight is considered to be delayed when it departs 15 minutes later than its scheduled time. In the reply, dated 25 November, he added flights are occasionally delayed due to various reasons such as weather, operational, commercial ATC, ramp, technical, airport issues etc.
For the January-October 2024 period, the on-time performance of these airlines at the four metro airports was in the range of 29.3-89.2 percent, an analysis of data provided by Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) shows.
During this 10-month period, Akasa Air had the best on-time performance of about 74.85 percent on an average, followed by AIX connect with about 73 percent, Vistara (72.26 percent), Indigo (70.79 percent), Air India (63.48 percent), Alliance Air (53.03 percent) and SpiceJet (48.61 percent).
Alliance Air, Air India and SpiceJet were the worst performers, ending up in the bottom three spots almost every month. The one exception was September, when Akasa Air—which has consistently performed better than other airlines in on time performance—replaced Air India in the bottom three spots.
The punctuality of the airlines has been worse this year than in previous years.
According to data provided in February 2024 by the then minister of state for civil aviation V.K. Singh in a written reply to Rajya Sabha, the on-time performance of market leader Indigo was 85.4 percent in 2023, 87.8 percent in 2022 and 92.4 percent in 2021.
Likewise, for Air India, the on-time performance stood at 74.4 percent in 2023, 86.5 percent in 2022 and 83 percent in 2021. For Akasa Air, which started operations in 2022, the on-time performance was 83.7 percent in 2023, and for the beleaguered airline SpiceJet, the on-time performance stood at 58.4 percent, 77.6 percent and 84.2 percent in 2021, 2022 and 2023, respectively.
The year 2024 also saw two major disruptions in January—when unprecedented fog resulted in 8,038 flights being delayed and 496 flights being cancelled, and in July, when a portion of a canopy fell at Delhi airport’s Terminal-1, leading to the closure of the terminal for more than a month.
Replying to a separate query in the Lok Sabha Thursday, Union Minister of Civil Aviation Kinjarapu Rammohan Naidu said that over 13.21 crore passengers were carried by domestic flights in 2024 (till October). He added that this number stood at 15.20 crore in 2023, 12.32 crore in 2022 and 8.27 crore in 2021.
As per DGCA reports, about 60-70 percent of the delays are attributed to be ‘reactionary’ where even a single delay in departure or arrival may trigger a chain reaction, causing delays across the network.