21 per cent rise in domestic traffic in January 2011

New Delhi, Feb 21 (PTI) Domestic air traffic rose byalmost 21 per cent in January over the same period last year,with Jet Airways and its subsidiary JetLite jointly flyingabout one-fourth of the passengers last month.

Over 49.36 lakh passengers were carried by alldomestic airlines last month as against 40.88 lakh in January2010, recording a growth of over 20.7 per cent, officialfigures released today showed.

Jet and JetLite together flew 12.26 lakh passengerslast month, followed by Kingfisher, which carried 9.61 lakhand IndiGo with 9.5 lakh. Air India (Domestic) flew 7.79 lakhflyers, SpiceJet 7.05 lakh and GoAir 3.15 lakh.

The statistics for market share showed Naresh Goyal''sJet and its wholly-owned subsidiary, cornering 24.8 per centof the entire passenger traffic this January, followed byKingfisher with 19.5 per cent and no-frill airline IndiGo veryclosely behind it, with 19.2 per cent.

National carrier Air India (Domestic) was in thefourth place with 15.8 per cent, followed by another low-costcarrier SpiceJet with 14.3 per cent.

The highest average seat factor, or passenger load perflight, was recorded at 88.6 per cent by IndiGo in January,followed by Kingfisher with 86.5, GoAir with 83.3 and SpiceJetwith 82.6 per cent, the figures showed.

Jet Airways and Air India (Domestic) recorded 73.9 and69.3 respectively.