More than 2.42 lakh passengers were affected by flight delays, cancellations and denied boarding in May, forcing domestic airlines to spend nearly Rs 6 crore on passenger facilitation and compensation, even as air travel continued to register steady growth, according to the latest traffic data released by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) on Tuesday.The DGCA data showed that 1,77,550 passengers were affected by flight delays of more than two hours during the month, while another 63,723 passengers were impacted by flight cancellations and 900 passengers by denied boarding. Airlines spent Rs 424.15 lakh on facilitating passengers affected by delays, Rs 70.32 lakh on cancellations and Rs 98.6 lakh on compensation and facilities for denied boarding, taking the total expenditure to Rs 593.07 lakh, or about Rs 5.93 crore.Overall, 1.56 per cent of all scheduled domestic flights were delayed by more than two hours in May. SpiceJet recorded the highest share of such delays at 15.75 per cent, followed by Fly91 at 5.85 per cent, Alliance Air at 2.09 per cent, Air India Group at 1.85 per cent, Akasa Air at 1.49 per cent, IndiGo at 0.78 per cent and Star Air at 0.7 per cent. Indiaone Air did not report any flights delayed beyond two hours.The report showed that delays were largely driven by operational knock-on effects, with reactionary delays accounting for 71 per cent of all delays. Air Traffic Control (ATC) issues contributed 9 per cent, operational reasons 6 per cent, technical reasons 4 per cent, passenger-related reasons 3 per cent, airport constraints 3 per cent, weather 2 per cent and miscellaneous factors 1 per cent.The overall cancellation rate among scheduled domestic airlines stood at 0.55 per cent in May. Indiaone Air recorded the highest cancellation rate at 5.58 per cent, followed by Alliance Air (4.29 per cent), SpiceJet (4.04 per cent), Fly91 (1.74 per cent), Star Air (0.83 per cent), Air India Group (0.39 per cent), IndiGo (0.36 per cent) and Akasa Air (0.14 per cent). Technical reasons accounted for the largest share of cancellations at 45.1 per cent, followed by operational reasons (26.6 per cent), weather (15.3 per cent), miscellaneous reasons (11.6 per cent) and commercial reasons (1.4 per cent).Despite the operational disruptions, domestic passenger traffic continued to grow. Scheduled domestic airlines carried 153.9 lakh passengers in May. During the January-May period, domestic carriers flew 729.4 lakh passengers, compared with 715.7 lakh during the corresponding period last year, registering an annual growth of 1.91 per cent. Passenger traffic also increased by 9.49 per cent over April.IndiGo retained its dominance in the domestic market with a 64.9 per cent market share after carrying 99.91 lakh passengers in May. The Air India Group followed with a 25.6 per cent share and 39.33 lakh passengers, while Akasa Air accounted for 5.8 per cent of the market. SpiceJet held a 2.5 per cent share, followed by Star Air (0.5 per cent), Fly91 (0.4 per cent), Alliance Air (0.3 per cent) and Indiaone Air (0.01 per cent).IndiGo also topped the on-time performance (OTP) rankings among major domestic carriers, recording an OTP of 82.8 per cent across the country’s 10 busiest airports. Akasa Air followed at 78.3 per cent, Air India Group at 74.5 per cent, Alliance Air at 70.5 per cent and SpiceJet at 26.5 per cent.Domestic airlines received 3,080 passenger complaints during May, equivalent to about two complaints for every 10,000 passengers carried. Baggage-related issues accounted for the largest share of complaints at 28.7 per cent, followed by flight-related problems at 26.4 per cent, refund-related issues at 19 per cent, customer service at 6.2 per cent, catering at 1.6 per cent, staff behaviour at 1.1 per cent and disability-related issues at 0.6 per cent. The remaining 16.2 per cent fell under other categories. Of the total complaints received, 3,074, or 99.8 per cent, were resolved by the airlines.