Two months after they were grounded, 532 domestic flights crisscrossed the Indian skies on Monday - the first day of resumption of air services. Demand for non-metro routes is significantly higher than metro routes, with the Delhi-Patna route witnessing the highest number of bookings for the travel period between May 25 and May 31, according to information. The booking pattern is reflective of a trend which suggests bulk of the demand comprises those going to visit their homes or travelling for health-related procedures.
“From no domestic passenger flights till Sunday to 532 flights & 39,231 passengers on Monday, action has returned to Indian skies. With Andhra Pradesh set to resume operations from Tuesday & West Bengal from 28 May, these numbers are all set to increase further,” Civil Aviation Minister Hardeep Singh Puri said in a tweet.
The Delhi-Patna route is highest in demand, followed by sectors such as Delhi-Bagdogra, Mumbai-Varanasi, Bengaluru-Patna, Delhi-Srinagar, etc. Prior to the grounding of flights announced by the government with effect from March 25, around 2,700 domestic flights operated in the country on a normal day. According to the standard operating procedures issued by the Ministry of Civil Aviation, only a third of those flights can operate now.
However, curtailment of the truncated schedule following requests by state governments led to cancellation of several flights at airports throughout the country. At Delhi Airport, the country’s largest aerodrome, more than 80 flights were cancelled.
At Mumbai airport, 47 flights were operated catering to a total of 4,852 passengers, which include 3,752 passengers at departures and 1,100 at arrivals.
The first flight to take-off from Delhi was IndiGo’s service to Pune, which departed at 5 am. Those who took the first flight out of the capital included paramilitary and army personnel, students and migrants.
In a statement, IndiGo said, “IndiGo plans on flying more than 200 daily flights until May 31, 2020… IndiGo operations ran smoothly and by afternoon, 85% of our flights have reached their final destination within 30 minutes of scheduled arrival time. There were no major delays or any other disruptions.” IndiGo said it flew about 20,000 passengers on Monday.
Online travel agency Paytm Travel said due to three consecutive lockdowns, several travellers had to stay back in cities such as Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru, and were now flying back to non-metro cities including Patna, Jaipur, Lucknow, Ahmedabad, Varanasi, Guwahati, among others.
Thousands of passengers reached airports since early in the morning on Monday only to be told by the airline staff that some of their flights have been cancelled causing hardship to them. Many people also took to social media to vent their anger. Gripped by anxiety and uncertainty, some came from faraway towns and were on the road for several hours wanting to catch the first flight to their respective states.
Bumpy take-off at Gujarat airports
A large number of flyers were left in the lurch after three flights were cancelled at Surat and one from Vadodara airports. At the SVPI airport in Ahmedabad, 80 flight movements were handled while three were cancelled due to rotational issues. In Porbandar, TruJet began operation between Ahmedabad and Porbandar with, only three passengers on the aircraft.
The varied Covid-19 quarantine and self-isolation rules in states and also the Union Health Ministry guidelines for arriving travellers also compounded their travel woes.
The airlines, which were allowed to operate one-third of their pre-lockdown domestic services from May 25, had to further truncate their flight schedules on Sunday leading to the cancellations. All carriers except GoAir operated their flights on Monday.
The flights were resumed on a day when India registered the biggest single day spike of 6,977 new coronavirus cases - surpassing the 6,000 mark for the fourth day- taking its tally to 1,38,845. India is now in the top 10 worst affected countries by the pandemic, overtaking Iran which was in the 10th position with 135,701cases.
