As festivities begin, domestic air passenger traffic surges in September

With the fall of coronavirus cases and with festivities ahead, India’s domestic air passenger traffic grew marginally by 2-3 per cent at around 69 lakh in September, credit ratings agency Icra said in a release on Wednesday. This comes as domestic flights operated at a higher capacity at 54 per cent in September 2021 over the same month last year.

However, this has also fuelled a greater risk of the third wave of Covid-19 infections, the Indian Centre of Medical Research (ICMR) worried and advised against “revenge travel”.

“Taking this into consideration, the third-wave peak can increase by up to 47 percent during the holiday season and can occur two weeks earlier compared to a scenario of easing restrictions in the absence of holiday travel,” an opinion piece by researchers at the ICMR read.

On the other hand, in Icra’s view, the increase in permitted capacity to 85 per cent levels is a step in the right direction.

The air passenger traffic was around 67 lakh in August. Compared year-on-year, air passenger traffic growth stood at around 74 per cent in the month under review over September 2020, the agency told news agency PTI.

This means that domestic airlines witnessed around 61,100 departures in September as compared to 39,628 departures in the same month of 2020.

In addition, Icra stated, the number of departures in the month gone by were sequentially higher by around 6 per cent.

“For September 2021, average daily departures were at around 2,100, significantly higher than the average daily departures of around 1,321 in September 2020, and higher than around 1,900 in August 2021, though they remained lower than around 2,200 in January 2021,” said Suprio Banerjee, Vice President and Sector Head, Icra, as quoted by PTI.

Notably, passenger capacity was reduced to 50 per cent of pre-Covid levels on June 1 due to the resurgence of the second wave of the pandemic.

However, the civil aviation ministry subsequently increased this capacity to 72.5 per cent on August 12 and then to 85 per cent on September 18, as Covid’s downward trajectory continued.

Additionally, the fare cap rule was relaxed in each band to be applicable up to the next 15 days only on a rolling basis, implying that the minimum and maximum fare chargeable will continue to be rolled over for the next 15 days cycle as opposed to the 30 days rule.