The aviation industry is witnessing a rise in demand for domestic airline operations. The number of passengers travelling through domestic flights has increased over the last three month period. Now, as per an ET report, airline’s might be able to operate more flights during the upcoming festive season. The government might allow airlines to increase the number of flights up to 75% of pre-COVID levels. This change may be allowed in the coming week (7 days) or 10 days. More on the story ahead.
Increased Airline Activity to Meet the Demand of Domestic Travel
After the lockdown was eased and flights were allowed to resume from May 25, the government had only allowed the airlines to operate 33% of their flights (pre-COVID level). It was later increased to 45% and then further to 60% in the month of September 2020.
Hardeep Singh Puri, Minister of Civil Aviation of India said, “The increase in the number of passengers taking domestic flights is encouraging and the need is to further increase the number of flights allowed. We are currently in discussions and may increase it to up to 75 per cent in a week to ten days.”
Before the pandemic and lockdown, domestic airlines operated around 2,500 flights on a daily. Compared to that, airlines are operating around 1,500 domestic flights on a daily. But the good thing is that demand is rising constantly.
Some of the airline executives believe that the month of September 2020, was the best month for domestic airline operations post-COVID. Flight loads have increased and demand is only rising. Adding to this, the government of Maharastra will now allow 30% of pre-COVID domestic flights to go in and out of the Mumbai airport.
As for the fare bands, Puri has expressed that the government hasn’t come to any firm stance on fixing the fare bands for the airline after November 24, 2020. He also said that the airlines are not sad with the current fare bands which are in place but there have been no discussions about them yet.
