new delhi flying high on strong economic recovery domestic air travel has made a comeback in 2009 with traffic registering an increase of 79 over the previous year in 2008 air traffic fell by 5 with 412 lakh domestic fliers taking to skies against 433 lakh in 2007the increase to 4451 lakh flyers in 2009 came on the strong revival in traffic since july as the first six months were consistently witnessing a double digit percentage fall last month for instance saw a whopping 33 increase with 448 lakh people flying within india against 337 lakh in december 2008 jet and kingfisher are operating over 70 of their fleet with budget airlines the combined market share of indigo spicejet jetlite and go air was 385 this figure goes up to 5560 after adding combined share of jet konnect and kingfisher red the budget brands of main airlines at this moment everyone has realised that low fare is the way to survive and go ahead so air indias decision not to have a low cost budget airline is baffling said a leading travel agentkingfisher which has reduced capacity dramatically last year lost the market leader slot to jet airways naresh goyals carrier ended 2009 with a 254 market share followed by vijay mallyas kingfisher at 239 air indiadomestic finished third with 175 share budget carrierss position remained unchanged with indigo leading the pack with 139 share followed by spicejet at 124 and jetlite at 75industry analysts are surprised by the sudden and sharp revival the rebound is much stronger and more robust than anyone could have anticipated octovberdecember has been very good for airlines and most will make money januarymarch also looks promising we are now looking at long term profitable growth if airlines continue the capacity and pricing discipline said kapil kaul india head of centre for asia pacific aviation kaul added that the growth has been mainly due to lcc model this factor led to both jet and kingfisher reporting good traffic something that would not have been possible with a full service airline alone ais cost structure may make running a lcc unviable but market forces will eventually lead the airline to have budget domestic flights this could happen in 2010 itself