2023 airline champs: Vistara grew 1.5 times pre-covid but IndiGo unbeatable

Domestic aviation in India closed 2023 with a best-ever performance, surpassing the previous best of 2019. The common thing between both these years was that they saw major airlines go down - Jet Airways in 2019 and Go First in 2023.

The passenger numbers went up by 5.78% over 2019, while the passengers saw a steep hike of 23.7% over 2022, however, this came at a very limited incremental departures, a mere 0.11%. The country saw 10,60,135 domestic departures in 2023, just 1,215 departures more in 2019 when 10,58,920 domestic departures operated. Capacity, measured in terms of ASK (Available Seat kilometres) was up 14% over 2022 and 5.3% over 2019.

Performance is typically benchmarked against the previous year, but three years starting with 2020 were aberration years due to the COVID-19 pandemic. From three years of shrinking, in 2023, it is now normalised and the airlines can fall back on 2023 to compare its performance starting this year.

The winner and the runner up!

Compared to 2019, in percentage terms, Vistara has added the most departures (63%), but another Tata group airline Air India Express grew the most in number of passengers. Air India Express saw 163% more domestic passengers than in 2019. This was largely due to the airline getting its focus back on domestic skies as it merges erstwhile AirAsia India with itself. In terms of capacity by ASK, Vistara gained the most again with a 67% growth.

Compared to last year, erstwhile AirAsia India - which operated the last few months of 2023 as AIX Connect, saw 28% more departures, 42% more passengers and 25% more ASKs. The last punch before its existence ends.

The runner up was IndiGo with a consistent 22.5% growth in departures over 2022 and 30% growth over 2019 in domestic departures. In terms of passengers, the airline saw 33% more passengers than 2022 and 35% more passengers than 2019, having fully recovered from COVID.

IndiGo remains unmatchable in absolute terms

IndiGo’s large base means that in percentage terms the airline may not be the winner but the airline remains unmatchable when it comes to absolute terms. IndiGo operated 1,42,436 more departures in 2023 than what it did in 2019. For context, no airline in the country has as many departures. If these departures were operated by a new airline, it would have been the second biggest airline in the country!

Likewise, IndiGo added 2.4 crore passengers between 2019 and 2023. At 9.19 crore domestic passengers in 2023, this is not just the highest for IndiGo but also the highest ever for any airline in India.

Any losers?

All airlines except SpiceJet operated more domestic departures than 2022 with SpiceJet being the only carrier which shrunk and a good 33% over 2022. The airline is just one-third of its pre-COVID presence in terms of departures, carrying only 39% of passenger numbers of what it carried in 2019 and its capacity by ASK is down 59% over pre-COVID times.

Air India - which was privatised in the middle of pandemic is yet to reach its pre-pandemic levels with 17.5% fewer domestic departures, leading to 11.4% fewer passengers and 12.5% fewer ASKs deployed on domestic routes as compared to 2019. The airline was under government control in 2019.

Go FIRST which operated until the first week of May, 2023 was carrying fewer passengers than pre-COVID due to a curtailed fleet as it had to ground multiple aircraft due to engine issues with Pratt & Whitney powered engines.

Changing landscape

This and the next year will see the landscape in Indian aviation change significantly. The AIX Connect (erstwhile AirAsia India) and Air India Express merger is in the last stages and the delayed merger between Vistara and Air India will start taking shape. The benchmark would thus change to Tata group airlines as one entity - split between its low cost and full service arm.

The merger of AirAsia India and Air India Express involved merger of a domestic and a predominantly international airline, but the way Vistara has grown - the merger of Vistara and Air India means the merger of two equals on the domestic front - probably a reason why the merger is delayed.