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Resuming Passenger Flights

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May 22, 2020

What is the issue?

  • 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 -
    1. face masks, gloves
    2. social distancing during check-in and in security queues
    3. mandatory temperature checks
    4. the downloading of the tracking app Aarogya Setu
    5. a limit on hand luggage
    6. 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.

 

Source: Indian Express, Business Standard

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