The government moved a fresh amendment in the lockdown guidelines for permitting passenger flights from May 25, 2020 onwards.
Here are the reasons for the change of Centre's stance in just 3 days, when it had prohibited the services till May 31, 2020.
How badly affected is the aviation sector?
The airlines were already suffering the ill effects of a pre-Covid-19 economic slowdown that the national lockdown compounded.
The aviation sector had nearly zero revenues since the countrywide lockdown commenced on March 25, 2020.
Airlines and the various allied sectors have lost non-recoverable revenue.
As studied, close to 3 million jobs were at risk in India on account of the stress in the country’s aviation sector.
A low-cost airline sent a mail to its employees warning them of an imminent closure if flight operations did not resume at the earliest.
There is an imminent threat of more than one airline moving towards closure.
This is because of both the extended lockdown and little to no relief in the economic package announced.
[The measures announced by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman for civil aviation comprised the ones that were announced before.
These included optimisation of Indian airspace, GST relief for the maintenance, repair and overhaul industry and privatisation of airports.]
These are learnt to be the reasons behind a sudden reversal in the Centre’s stance in passenger flights operation.
[The government also said that the railways were doing much larger operations. So, opening flight operations would absorb a portion of that.]
What were the demands from the airlines side?
Reportedly, there were increased demands from airline executives to the civil aviation ministry for resumption of services.
They said they could be forced to sack people en masse and use fleet to pay off mounting debt and would be pushed towards bankruptcy.
They argued that when trains are free to ferry people from red zones to green zones, why airlines could not fly.
Moreover, they would mostly be flying from red zones to red zones on routes such as Delhi-Mumbai, or Mumbai-Chennai.
They emphasized that airlines had more sanitised operating environments.
What are the regulations mandated?
The civil aviation ministry’s note on standard operating procedure sets out the protocol for passengers and the airport staff to follow.
The reopening of passenger flights operation will start with one-third of operations.
It is conditional upon strict safety guidelines to be followed at airports and on aircraft.
Some of them include -
face masks, gloves
social distancing during check-in and in security queues
mandatory temperature checks
the downloading of the tracking app Aarogya Setu
a limit on hand luggage
no meals on board
There was also an announcement on capping airfares for 3 months.
The cap has been decided in 7 categories starting with flights with less than 40 minutes’ travel time and in 6 other categories of 30 minutes of incremental travel time.
Another restriction is that 40% of the seats has to be sold at a fare lower than the midpoint of the maximum fare.
What are the concerns?
Resuming operations does offer a respite for the airlines that have been stalled.
However, the airlines are resuming under conditional measures.
To impose fare caps and ask airlines to follow route dispersal guidelines at this time was unexpected.
Given the deep uncertainties over economic revival, an extension of the 3-month cap remains a permanent risk.
Capping pricing will create more complications.
Further, some of the measures like ensuring the passenger receives SMS receipt upon checking in their baggage will require upgradation to IT systems.
In all, the limited capacity operations with fare regulation and other added costs have become a concern for the airlines.
