Mumbai, February 28 India's domestic air passenger traffic grew by 4.36% year-on-year to 152.49 lakh in January 2026, according to DGCA data, compared to the corresponding month of the previous year.
The domestic carriers, including four major ones – IndiGo, Air India Group, SpiceJet, and Akasa Air – together flew a total of 146.11 lakh passengers on local routes in January 2025, according to data released by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) late Friday evening.
Gurugram-headquartered IndiGo, which faced significant operational disruptions due to stricter norms for pilot rest and duty periods in December and lost about 4% market share in the previous month, regained it with a 63.6% market share, having flown 97.04 lakh passengers during the reporting month.
In contrast, Air India Group lost nearly three percentage points of market share, at 26.5% (40.34 lakh passengers), sequentially in the previous month, according to data.
In terms of passenger load factor, Akasa Air recorded the highest load factor at 93.2% in January 2026, while IndiGo had the second-highest at 87.7% during the reporting month.
PLF (Passenger Load Factor) is a metric used in the airline industry to measure the utilization of an airline's passenger-carrying capacity.
The overall cancellation rate for scheduled domestic airlines in January 2026 was 1.44%, while IndiGo achieved the best on-time performance at 70.9% from six key metro airports – Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, Hyderabad, and Bengaluru – during the month under review, according to DGCA data.
