AirAsia India's passenger traffic up by 57 pc in Jan-March

Mumbai: AirAsia India flew 8.4 lakh passengers in the January-March quarter of the current year, up 57 per cent from 5.38 lakh in the same period of 2016, aided by new routes and higher capacity.

The Bengaluru-based airline, which is a joint venture between Tata Sons and Malaysia's AirAsia Berhad, raised its fleet size to nine aircraft from six in the first quarter of the previous year, AirAsia India said in a statement today.

The number of passengers carried increased by 57 per cent year-on-year to 0.84 million, with 50 per cent increase in capacity, the airline said. The seat factor, a measure of how full the plane flies, also increased by three per cent to 89 per cent in the quarter from 86 per cent in Q1CY16.

Three new routes, Delhi-Srinagar, Delhi-Bagdogra and Delhi-Pune, were added in AirAsia India's network, it said adding that the frequency on the Delhi-Goa route also increased in the first quarter of the current year.

AirAsia India, which will be completing three years of operations in June, currently flies on 20 domestic routes from three hubs --Bengaluru, Kolkata and New Delhi.