Seat shortages in Indian Aviation Market

There is a handful of domestic airlines and you can count them on fingers: IndiGo, Spicejet, Jet Airways, Go Air and Air India. Together there airlines offer close to 2 lakh seats every day to the passengers. In a country, where the percentage of population travelling by air is not even 1 percent, these number of seats are still very less. So, this fact is sealed that there is indeed a shortage of seats, especially since the Kingfisher Airlines has been grounded. Add to it the persistent problems at the Air India and even these seats become susceptible to availability.

Out of these airlines, it is only Air India and, to some extent, Jet Airways which provide the medium and long haul flights. Since these are the full service carriers, these carriers do not provide the cheap international flights. So, if you have to travel to the destinations beyond Singapore on west and the United Arab Emirates on the East, you do not have many options in terms of carriers flying on these segments. So, besides the shortage of seats in the domestic market, there is also a shortage of seats on the short and long haul flights on the domestic carriers. Well, the foreign carriers do fill that slot but these might not offer as much cheap air tickets as the domestic ones. 

Besides the absolute seat shortages on the domestic and international flights, there are also shortages in the class-wise segments. While the no-frill service providers are filling the ever increasing demand of the cheap air tickets of the economy class travel, there is acute shortage of the business class seats for the people who want to use more comfortable travel options on all routes.

These shortages are the prime reasons for the prices of the air tickets shooting the roof, stoking the fears of cartelization of air fares by the domestic carriers.