The planned cut of 400 to 500 flights by IndiGo , India’s dominant carrier handling six in 10 air travellers, will shrink passenger options during peak season and spike airfares, with competitors lacking spare aircraft to fill the void.

The last available monthly figures on the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) website for October show that IndiGo ferried 91.96 lakh passengers or 65% of the total 1.4 crore fliers. Extrapolated to daily figures, this works out to 2.96 lakh passengers per day in a month that witnessed a festive rush due to Dasara and Deepavali.

Back-of-the-envelope calculations — assuming a seat capacity of 180 per A320 aircraft, of which 90% were possibly sold — indicate that reducing daily flights from 400 to 500 would affect 65,000 to 81,000 daily passenger

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