Domestic air traffic finally crosses 1,000 departures per day

Mumbai: In the past three months, the total number of daily domestic flights operated by airlines across India never crossed 1,000 departures per day. However, this week, on Monday and Wednesday, airlines operated a total of 1,012 and 1,044 departures respectively, crossing a small milestone in a rather long journey to normalcy.
On May 25, the day operation of domestic flights resumed, airlines operated only 428 flights, according to ministry of civil aviation data. Though the growth has more than doubled since then in the past three months, the domestic air traffic volume is not even half of what airlines operated last year. Data from Airports Authority of India shows that airlines operated a total of 89,000 domestic departures in August 2019, which is about 2,900 departures per day.
One of the reasons why domestic air traffic took so long to cross the 1,000 mark is because of added restrictions on departures out of Mumbai airport. “Pre-Covid, Mumbai handled about 330 daily domestic departures, which was about 11 % of India’s total domestic departures. But since the state government limited Mumbai airport operations to only 50 departures per day, Mumbai’s contribution is down to only 5 %. Had Mumbai airport been allowed to operate to one-third of its capacity, then it would have handled about 120 daily departures,’’ said an airline official, requesting anonymity.