India’s largest airline, low-cost carrier IndiGo’s blazing pace of growth has put it at the top of the list of airlines all over the world in terms of recording the fastest rate of growth in flight frequencies in the month of October. According to a weekly report by aviation industry analysis firm OAG, IndiGo registered a growth rate of 9.5 pc in October, operating 66,660 flights as against 60903 flights in October 2023, a total gain of 5,757 flights this year.

While IndiGo was the fastest growing airline, it was American Airlines that added the largest number of flights to its frequencies, operating 188,608 flights in October 2024 as against 172,694 flights in October last year, gaining a total of 15,914 flights, a growth rate of 9.2 pc. OAG adds that the second largest addition of frequencies in October has been made by another airline from the United States, Delta Airlines, which is operating 10,784 flights more this year, compared with last year.

In overall context, OAG says that its flight frequency counter shows the number of one-way flights in the schedule from January 1 to October 20 stood at over 30 million or 102,122 scheduled commercial flights every day this year.

OAG says that in terms of seats on the scheduled flights, the global capacity in October will be 514 million, up 5.8 pc on last October which is in line with the trend of recent months. This year on year increase translates to 28 million seats, and North East Asia leads the way in the volume of seats added, accounting for 9.4 million of that increase, equivalent to an above average year on year growth rate of 9.0 pc.

Following North East Asia, Western Europe records the second highest growth in seats, with 4.5 million additional seats, or 4.2 pc higher than last year. OAG says that the market with the fastest growth rate this month is Upper South America where seat capacity has increased by 16.7 pc. It adds that this market also had the fastest growth rate in September 2024, that stood at 17.1 pc.

OAG says that three of the four country pairs with the highest growth in terms of additional seats involve China, namely China – Japan, which saw an increase of 836,000 seats, China – Thailand, with a rise of 608,000 seats and China – South Korea, with an increase of 384,000 seats. The other market in the top four is Japan – South Korea, that saw a growth of 444,000 seats. OAG highlights that it is evident with this data that the fastest growth of the global market has come from North-East Asia.

In absolute volumes, the largest country pair is Spain – United Kingdom with 5.04 million seats, which is 1.51 million seats more than the second largest country pair, Mexico – United States at 3.53 million seats.

The aviation analyst firm says that in the top 10 domestic markets, the Chinese market is adding the most additional seats compared to last year, up 4.4 million seats, followed by the United States with 1.9 million more seats than October 2023. It adds that India, which is the third largest domestic market with 17.2 million seats, has the fastest growth rate at 10.1 pc and now 4.9 million seats ahead of the fourth-largest market Japan, which has 12.3 million seats and which declined this month by 0.4 pc. Two other domestic markets declined this month in addition to Japan, namely Australia, that fell by 3.1 pc and and Mexico that saw a steeper decline of 6.4 pc.