According to industry insiders, a traditionally weak travel period, along with high airfares and capacity constraints, led India’s domestic air passenger traffic to decline in September 2026 on a year-on-year basis
India’s domestic air passenger traffic declined 6.49 per cent in September 2026 on a year-on-year basis, data released by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) showed.
The DGCA data showed that scheduled domestic airlines carried around 1.18 crore passengers during September, compared with around 1.26 crore passengers during the corresponding period of last year.
Besides, domestic airlines carried around 12.24 crore passengers during January–September 2026, compared with around 12.34 crore passengers during the corresponding period of the previous year, a decline of 0.82 per cent.
On a sequential basis, the airlines carried around 1.21 crore passengers during August and around 1.20 crore passengers during July.
Load factor-wise, Akasa Air recorded the highest passenger load factor at 88.1 per cent, followed by IndiGo at 81.1 per cent, the Air India Group at 79.9 per cent and SpiceJet at 78.8 per cent.
In terms of market share, IndiGo held its dominant position among domestic carriers after carrying 77.30 lakh passengers, accounting for 65.4 per cent of the market.
Furthermore, the Air India Group — comprising Air India and Air India Express — accounted for a combined market share of 26.8 per cent after carrying 31.65 lakh passengers.
Meanwhile, Akasa Air accounted for a market share of 5.6 per cent after carrying 6.64 lakh passengers.
Other airlines such as Star Air accounted for a market share of 0.7 per cent, while SpiceJet, Fly91, Alliance Air and IndiaOne Air accounted for 0.6 per cent, 0.5 per cent, 0.4 per cent and less than 0.1 per cent respectively.
The overall cancellation rate of scheduled domestic airlines stood at 1.15 per cent, with technical reasons accounting for the largest share of cancellations at 37.8 per cent.
Additionally, the DGCA data showed that airlines received 2,466 passenger complaints, translating into around 2.09 complaints per 10,000 passengers carried.
In terms of operational performance, IndiGo recorded the highest on-time performance (OTP) among the airlines covered at 10 major airports at 91.1 per cent, followed by Akasa Air at 90.8 per cent, the Air India Group at 81.7 per cent, Alliance Air at 75 per cent and SpiceJet at 16.6 per cent.
In addition, the DGCA attributed the majority of flight delays to reactionary reasons, which accounted for 65 per cent of all delays.
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