Air India asked to submit plan on increasing market share; IndiGo remains most popular with passengers

Air India, the ailing state-owned carrier, has been asked to prepare a plan to enhance its market share by Civil Aviation Minister Ajit Singh.

Concerned over the national carrier's performance, the minister asked Air India to submit its plan to enhance its domestic passenger market share in a week's time.

Singh is reported to have told Air India that its plan should include month-wise targets of market share along with corresponding strategy to achieve these targets over the next one year.

Meanwhile, no frills airline IndiGo continued its spree of carrying the maximum number of passengers besides having the largest market share in August.

IndiGo carried 12.05 lakh passengers in August, followed by Jet Airways-JetLite combined flying 11.01 lakh, SpiceJet 8.07 lakh, Air India 7.94 lakh and GoAir 3.24 lakh.

There was a minor increase of 0.5 per cent in the total number of passengers carried in January-August this year compared with the same period in 2011.

The worst performer was cash-strapped Kingfisher Airlines which carried only 1.38 lakh passengers in August, while the new scheduled carrier Air Mantra of Religare, which is operating only two small 17-seater aircraft since July 23, flew a few hundred air travellers to Chandigarh and Amritsar.

In terms of market share, IndiGo was again on top with 27.6 per cent, followed by Jet-JetLite combine with 25.2, SpiceJet with 18.5, Air India 18.2, GoAir with 7.4 and Kingfisher at the end of the list with 3.2 per cent.

Noting that Air India had maintained the 18.2 per cent level since July, the aviation minister asked Air India to work out innovative and customer-focused strategies to achieve optimum utilisation of all planes.

With inputs from IANS