The Indian aviation industry would continue healthy performance, driven by buoyant domestic passenger traffic growth, which is estimated to grow by ~18% during FY2018. This notwithstanding the moderation in capacity growth due to various factors like technical glitches, delays in delivery of aircraft and focus on international operations. The domestic passenger traffic growth remained healthy backed by improvement in core growth drivers like economic environment and increasing tourism demand. The strong demand has pushed the passenger load factor (PLF) to an all-time high of 86.5% in the current fiscal and India remains one of the best performing key domestic aviation markets in the world in terms of PLF. The estimated passenger traffic growth remains broadly in line with ICRA's previous estimates of 15-17%.
On international routes too, the Indian airlines continued to outperform the industry during the current year. The international passenger traffic growth from India is estimated to be ~10% in FY2018, while the Indian airlines are expected to report a growth of 13.5% during the same period. Increasing capacity deployment by Indian airlines on international routes and growing tourism demand are the key growth drivers. Resultantly, the market share of the Indian airlines on international routes has remained at an all-time high during the current fiscal.
According to Anand Kulkarni, AVP and Associate Head, Corporate Sector Ratings, ICRA, ''The Indian aviation industry demonstrated a resilient performance during the year in spite of the uptrend in aviation turbine fuel (ATF) prices. The average ATF prices increased by 10% during FY2018; however, some of the key airlines were able to expand the profitability during 9m FY2018 through higher PLFs, resultantly improving yields and cost efficiency measures. Increased revenue base also helped the profitability performance of the industry. The ATF prices continue to remain 11.6% higher Y-o-Y in Q4 FY2018; however, the industry profitability is expected to be adequate considering current pricing discipline.''
As for the growth in industry capacity (measured in available seat kilometres-ASKMs), the same remained moderate at ~14.5% during the current fiscal, primarily due to below average capacity addition by the market leader, Indigo. The airline has been facing delays in deliveries of new aircraft as well as operational issues in the delivered aircraft. Going forward, the industry is expected to experience some capacity shocks due to grounding of 14 aircraft by DGCA on account of technical glitches, which might impact the passenger traffic growth to the extent of 2-2.5% during the affected period. However, ICRA does not anticipate any impact on profitability of the airlines due to compensation clause with the aircraft engine suppliers.
The passenger traffic on routes under the regional connectivity scheme (RCS) has remained marginal in the current fiscal in-line with ICRA expectations. There have been delays in commencement of operations on many of the routes due to inadequate readiness of the airports or slot constraints at the key airports. However, considering wider participation by airlines in the second phase of RCS, the scheme is likely to generate material passenger traffic over the next two to three years.
