Domestic air traffic drops nearly 12 per cent to 1.35 crore in June; IndiGo widens market lead

India's domestic air passenger traffic declined nearly 12 per cent to 1.35 crore in June from May, DGCA data showed. IndiGo increased its market share to 66.3 per cent, while airlines paid compensation for cancellations, delays and denied boarding

New Delhi: Domestic air traffic fell nearly 12 per cent to 1.35 crore in June compared to 1.53 crore passengers flown by the carriers in May, according to latest official data. In comparison to the number of 1.36 crore recorded in June 2025, the decline has been marginal last month. Generally, June, July and August are lean periods for airlines in terms of traffic.

IndiGo’s market share climbed to 66.3 per cent in June from 64.9 per cent in May while that of Air India Group to 23.9 per cent from 25.6 per cent during the same period, the data from the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) showed.

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The market share of Akasa Air rose to 6.4 per cent in June from 5.8 per cent in May. In the case of SpiceJet, the market share dropped to 1.9 per cent last month from 2.5 per cent in May.

“Passengers carried by domestic airlines during January – June 2026 were 864.04 lakhs as against 851.74 lakhs during the corresponding period of the previous year thereby registering an annual growth of 1.44 per cent and monthly growth of -1.03 per cent,” DGCA said in its traffic data report for June.

In the wake of surging fuel prices due to the West Asia conflict, airlines had also temporarily curtailed their networks. IndiGo had an On Time Performance (OTP) of 89.4 per cent in June, followed by Air India Group at 85.9 per cent, Akasa Air (82.7 per cent), Alliance Air (74.7 per cent) and SpiceJet (33.5 per cent).

OTP is computed for ten major airports — Bangalore, Delhi, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, Ahmedabad, Cochin, Guwahati and Lucknow.

Last month, the overall cancellation rate of scheduled domestic airlines stood at 0.63 per cent. Domestic airlines shelled out Rs 61.98 lakh towards compensation and facilities for 43,968 passengers who were affected by flight cancellations in June.

A total of Rs 2.85 crore was spent by airlines towards facilities of 1,10,273 passengers impacted by flight delays, as per the data. As many as 1,847 passengers were denied boarding in June and airlines shelled out Rs 64.84 lakh towards compensation and facilities in this regard.