Indian airlines fly high as passenger traffic surges

Shares of Indian airlines InterGlobe Aviation and SpiceJet surged on Friday after regulatory data showed that passenger growth jumped 136.6 per cent last month as the government started to ease Covid related travel restrictions.

India had halted air travel in March 2020 as the country went into a lockdown to curb the spread of the coronavirus. Domestic flights resumed in May 2020, but air travel ever since has had some limitations as the pandemic progressed.

Domestic airlines carried 6.7 million passengers in August, compared with 2.8 million passengers in the year-ago period, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation said on Thursday.

InterGlobe Aviation, which runs India’s largest airline IndiGo, extended gains to a fourth session and scaled a record high of 2,168.80 rupees on Friday, while shares of SpiceJet rose up to 7.9 per cent to 81.95 rupees, their highest level in two months.

Passenger load factor, a measure of how much of an airline’s passenger carrying capacity has been used, jumped 11.8 per cent for IndiGo and 6.7 per cent for SpiceJet in August from prior month.