India’s domestic aviation market has quietly crossed another milestone. Fresh data from the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) show that airlines carried around 161 million domestic passengers in calendar year 2024, up roughly 6 percent from 2023 and cementing India’s position among the world’s fastest growing air travel markets. The surge has come despite a year marked by severe operational disruptions, from engine-related groundings to scheduling crises and weather snarls, raising pressing questions about capacity, reliability and what travelers can expect in 2025 and beyond.
Traffic Surges Past 160 Million, Extending Post Pandemic Rebound
DGCA figures released in January 2025 indicate that domestic airlines transported about 16.13 crore passengers in 2024, equivalent to just over 161 million trips within India’s borders. That is an increase from around 152 million domestic passengers in 2023, itself already a record at the time. The latest numbers confirm that the post Covid recovery in India’s skies has decisively shifted into a new growth phase, rather than a one off rebound.
The jump in volumes aligns with a broader rise in India’s total air travel footprint. According to the International Air Transport Association, India handled roughly 211 million air passengers in 2024 when domestic and international traffic are combined, helping the country climb to fifth place globally in overall passenger numbers. Domestic flying accounts for the bulk of that activity, underscoring the role of internal connectivity in powering economic expansion.
Government planning documents for 2024 to 2025 point to the scale of the growth trajectory. Projections for the current financial year put domestic departing passengers at around 165 to 166 million, following 153 to 154 million in 2023 to 2024. Those numbers refer to one way journeys originating in India, while the calendar year DGCA tallies track total domestic segments flown, but both series point in the same direction: high single digit to low double digit growth has become the new normal.
The pace is particularly striking set against the turbulence of recent years. Domestic traffic fell off a cliff in 2020 at the height of the pandemic, before rebounding to roughly 123 million passengers in 2022 and passing pre Covid levels in 2023. That the market not only recovered but set fresh records again in 2024, even as airlines grappled with fresh operational shocks, highlights the depth of pent up demand among Indian travelers.
Who Is Flying: Market Share, Load Factors and New Travel Patterns
Behind the headline figures lies a heavily consolidated market. Low cost giant IndiGo has tightened its grip on domestic skies, with DGCA and industry data showing its market share around or above 60 percent in 2024. In passenger terms, IndiGo alone carried close to 100 million domestic flyers last year, more than the entire Indian market handled a decade ago. Its dense network connecting metros with tier two and tier three cities has made it the default option for both business and leisure travelers.
The Air India group has emerged as the clear number two on trunk routes. The full service flag carrier, together with Air India Express and the soon to be integrated Vistara, carried roughly 46 million domestic passengers in 2024. Following its privatization and mega aircraft orders, the group is in the midst of a multi year fleet and product upgrade that is gradually increasing capacity on key domestic sectors, especially out of Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru.
Other players have a much smaller footprint in comparison. SpiceJet’s domestic market share has slipped to the low single digits amid financial pressures and a shrinking fleet, while younger entrant Akasa Air has been building share in the mid single digits, positioning itself as a nimble, all Boeing low cost carrier. Regional operators continue to play a niche role on subsidized and remote connectivity routes.
At the same time, India has joined the ranks of the highest utilization markets worldwide. IATA estimates that India’s domestic passenger load factor in 2024 was around 86 percent, the highest among major domestic aviation markets. That reflects both strong demand and tight capacity, with aircraft often going out nearly full on popular routes and peak time slots at metro airports largely saturated. For travelers, it has meant fuller cabins, higher fares during festival and holiday peaks, and fewer empty middle seats.
Growth in the Shadow of Disruption: Groundings, Cancellations and Delays
What makes the 2024 growth story particularly notable is that it played out against a backdrop of repeated operational crises. Engine issues affecting certain Airbus A320neo family aircraft powered by Pratt & Whitney geared turbofan engines continued to ripple through Indian fleets, forcing carriers to ground dozens of planes for inspections and repairs. Capacity that was planned for busy holiday periods at times failed to materialize, straining remaining aircraft and crews.
Financial and operational stress at some airlines also translated into irregular operations. SpiceJet, for example, has consistently reported one of the highest cancellation rates among major carriers, at close to 2 percent of flights in some months, according to DGCA punctuality statistics. That is still a small share in absolute terms, but for affected passengers it has meant last minute scrambles to rebook and extended waits at already crowded terminals.
Weather and infrastructure have added further fragility. Dense winter fog in North India, heavy monsoon downpours, and congestion at major hubs have all contributed to spikes in delays and missed connections. DGCA data for peak months in 2023 and 2024 show hundreds of thousands of passengers facing significant delays, with airlines collectively paying several crore rupees in mandatory “facilitation” and compensation for disrupted journeys.
The most dramatic disruption in recent memory came in December 2025, when IndiGo experienced a full blown scheduling crisis as it struggled to realign rosters with new flight crew duty and rest regulations. The airline cancelled roughly 4,500 flights over about ten days, according to public records, forcing the regulator to temporarily relax some rules, cap certain airfares, and order expedited refunds. While that episode unfolded after the 2024 traffic year, it has sharpened scrutiny of how resilient Indian carriers really are to regulatory and operational shocks.
Regulators Under Pressure to Balance Safety, Capacity and Consumer Rights
The DGCA has found itself walking a tightrope as traffic has surged. On one hand, the regulator has had to insist on strict adherence to safety norms, including engine inspection requirements and revised flight duty time limitations for crew, in line with global standards. On the other, enforcement actions that ground planes or constrain schedules can quickly translate into capacity shortfalls in a market where demand is surging faster than fleets can be expanded.
The IndiGo scheduling crisis has already prompted questions in parliament and from consumer groups about oversight and planning. The Ministry of Civil Aviation ordered an inquiry into the disruption, and the DGCA demanded explanations from the airline over its rostering practices. Officials have publicly emphasized that passenger rights, particularly timely refunds and clear communication about cancellations, are non negotiable obligations for carriers operating in India’s liberalized market.
Passenger rights rules, updated in the years after deregulation, entitle customers to compensation or facilities in cases of long delays, cancellations and denied boarding, depending on the circumstances. Yet enforcement remains patchy. Travelers routinely complain of difficulty securing refunds, limited transparency around rebooking options, and a lack of effective recourse when ground staff are overwhelmed during disruption events.
Industry executives counter that many irregularities are the product of systemic constraints rather than laxity alone. Slot shortages at major airports, ongoing runway and terminal works, and airspace restrictions over certain corridors all limit how flexibly airlines can respond when things go wrong. For regulators, the challenge is to raise accountability and consumer protection without further choking off capacity in a market that is already running hot.
Airports Race to Keep Pace with Demand Across the Country
India’s airport network is undergoing its own rapid expansion to accommodate the swelling tide of domestic flyers. Major metro hubs in Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru and Hyderabad are in various stages of runway upgrades, terminal expansions or operator transitions, intended to unlock additional capacity and ease choke points that have plagued peak travel hours. However, construction works can themselves create new bottlenecks in the short term.
Beyond the metros, a raft of second tier airports has started reporting record passenger numbers. Facilities such as Guwahati and Lucknow each handled more than six to seven million passengers in the 2024 to 2025 financial year, recording high single digit growth helped by new routes, regional tourism initiatives and religious mega events. Mangaluru, Coimbatore, Ranchi and others have posted their own monthly records as airlines deploy more narrowbody jets on point to point domestic connections.
The government’s regional connectivity scheme, which provides subsidies to link underserved airports, has continued to push traffic deeper into the country’s interior. Small turboprop flights now connect towns in the Northeast, central India and the Himalayan states to larger hubs, often with just a handful of daily services but outsized economic impact. For many communities, the growth in domestic air travel is not just about leisure trips but also medical access, business links and faster cargo movements.
Even so, infrastructure is struggling to keep up in some places. Terminal congestion, limited parking bays, and inadequate ground transport links to city centers remain common complaints among travelers. Airport operators have responded by adding digi yatra biometric gates, self bag drop systems and expanded security lanes, but staffing shortages and hardware teething issues can blunt the efficiency gains during the busiest holiday peaks.
What It Means for Travelers: Fares, Reliability and Booking Strategies
For Indian travelers, the combination of surging demand and periodic disruption has produced a mixed experience. On many routes, particularly those connecting smaller cities to metros, more airline competition and higher frequencies have created better choice and more reasonable base fares during off peak periods. Promotional sales and loyalty schemes remain a feature of the market, especially from IndiGo, the Air India group and Akasa.
At the same time, airfare spikes during festivals, school holidays and long weekends have become more pronounced. With aircraft running at some of the highest load factors globally, there is limited slack in the system. Once a certain booking threshold is crossed, yield management systems push up prices sharply. Travelers who book late for Diwali, Christmas, New Year or major cricket events now routinely face eye watering one way fare quotes on trunk routes that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago.
Reliability is another concern. While on time performance for India’s airlines has hovered in the 70 to 80 percent range at major airports in recent months, localized weather events, air traffic control constraints and airline level disruptions can quickly cascade into delays and missed connections. Regular flyers increasingly hedge their bets by scheduling buffer time between meetings, opting for early morning departures when possible, and avoiding tight self connections between domestic and international legs.
Travel agents and corporate travel managers report a rise in demand for flexible or refundable fares among business travelers who cannot afford to be stranded by a cancellation, even if it means paying a premium. Leisure travelers, for their part, are more likely to invest in travel insurance that covers missed connections and long delays, and to educate themselves about their rights under DGCA regulations before they head to the airport.
The Road Ahead: Capacity Orders, Consolidation and Emerging Risks
Looking ahead, all signs point to India’s domestic air passenger traffic pushing further beyond the 160 million mark in the near term, provided the economy maintains momentum. Airlines have collectively placed some of the largest aircraft orders in commercial aviation history, with IndiGo and the Air India group each committing to hundreds of new narrowbody and widebody jets. A sizable portion of these deliveries is earmarked for domestic deployment, either to open new city pairs or to add frequencies on saturated routes.
Consolidation is reshaping the competitive landscape as well. The merger of Vistara into Air India and the integration of AirAsia India into the broader Tata controlled aviation portfolio reduce the number of full service brands in the market, even as low cost carriers dominate overall seat share. Industry analysts expect further strategic partnerships and code shares rather than new standalone entrants, given the capital intensity and regulatory scrutiny involved.
Risks remain on the horizon. Engine reliability issues that have already forced groundings could resurface if supply chains struggle to keep up with the demands of a rapidly growing fleet. Training enough pilots, engineers and cabin crew to safely operate the expanding aircraft order books is another challenge, particularly under tighter duty time and rest rules. And as the tragic crash of an Air India widebody jet in 2025 reminded the country, safety can never be taken for granted in a market where the pressure to grow quickly is immense.
For now, however, the core story is one of resilience and rising expectations. Even in a year marked by high profile disruptions, India’s domestic skies remained busier than ever, carrying more than 160 million passengers to work, weddings, pilgrimages and holidays. For travelers at home and abroad watching India’s aviation story unfold, understanding both the scale of the surge and the stresses beneath it has become essential to planning any journey through one of the world’s most dynamic air travel markets.