Government allows more domestic flights; 19 lakh passengers fly in first month of schedule flights resumption
NEW DELHI: The first month of domestic flight resumption has seen almost 19 lakh people flying within the country. Schedule domestic flights were suspended on March 25 and allowed to resume at one-third level of the originally approved summer schedule from May 25. On Friday the aviation ministry allowed Indian carriers to deploy upto 45% of the schedule — this will mean more flights and more routes reopening up, depending on demand and sectors that airlines find financially viable to operate on.
Aviation minister H S Puri tweeted that from May 25 to June 25 saw 18.9 lakh passengers on about 21,300 flights. This translates into an average of about 90 passengers on a domestic flight.
In one month since recommencement of calibrated domestic civil aviation operations in the country, our skies & airp… https://t.co/M9BHdvTezA
— Hardeep Singh Puri (@HardeepSPuri) 1593153951000
Domestic flights had resumed at one-third of the original summer schedule level and will be gradually ramped up as demand increases and travel restrictions — flight handling at many airports has been capped by state governments and different quarantine requirements in different states — ease. Calendar years 2018 and 2019 had seen over a crore domestic flyers every month.
Minister Puri had recently said India used to have 3-3.5 lakh domestic passengers daily in pre-pandemic times. “We started with 30,000 passengers on May 25 and since then have seen a maximum of 72,000 domestic passengers on a day. I expect to reach half of the pre-corona level of 1.5-1.6 lakh domestic travellers before mid July,” he had recently.
