Pandemic grounds country's aviation sector

Mumbai: India's airlines face widespread domestic ticket cancellations as more people call off leisure and business trips, staying indoors to protect themselves from the Covid-19 pandemic. Carriers are also curtailing domestic flights and reviewing fleet expansion plans. This will be an additional loss of business for airlines that expected the recent mass cancellations of foreign trips to be offset by a spurt in local travel. It isn’t clear whether the downturn will be reversed with the lowering of fuel prices, the biggest cost chunk for an airline.Cancellations and rescheduling requests have increased over the past week, accelerating after the World Health Organization declared the virus outbreak a pandemic on Wednesday. They are expected to shoot up further after India’s aviation regulator on Thursday advised to waive cancellation and rescheduling fees. ET spoke to executives at airlines and travel companies, some of whom spoke on condition of anonymity. 74621153 Airlines have cancelled or clubbed close to 60 domestic flights to and from the busiest airports of New Delhi and Mumbai in the past week, said one person. “Our cancellation rates have doubled to about 16%. There is a 20% slowdown in domestic travel,” said a top executive at one of India’s biggest online travel portals, which does close to 150,000 bookings every week. The executive said the situation was dynamic and could move either way. An executive at a low-cost carrier said it faces up to 10% higher cancellation rates than usual during this week. “Domestic demand has significantly softened in the last week, down 30% on the previous week,” said Rakshit Desai, managing director at FCM Travel Solutions, a corporate travel company which sells 25,000 to 30,000 trips a week.IndiGo, India’s biggest carrier, said it has seen a 20% decline in fresh bookings week-on-week. It sells more than 1.5 million tickets a week. An airline executive confirmed that cancellations have increased, but didn’t elaborate as the situation is “too fluid.” Aloke Bajpai, chief executive at travel portal Ixigo, said daily requests to reschedule flights have risen twofold. He didn’t provide absolute numbers. A SpiceJet executive said there were cancellations only on some routes, while a senior Air India executive said the cancellation rates weren’t alarming.IndiGo and SpiceJet have been trying to garner traffic by offering flash sales of rock-bottom airfares at Rs 1,000, for instance. Until last week, Indian and foreign carriers had cancelled close to 600 flights to and from India. India’s health ministry has suspended most visas till April 15, starting March 13. Indians returning from or via China, Italy, Iran, Korea, France, Spain and Germany after February 15 will be quarantined for a minimum of 14 days. “It would be appropriate if airlines support their passengers in this tough time by waiving cancellation/reschedule charges or by providing any other incentive,” the Directorate General of Civil Aviation said in its advisory. Vistara on Friday said it has waived cancellation charges for domestic tickets booked on or before March 1and international tickets booked on or before March 12.Airlines have curtailed or stalled expansion plans. SpiceJet may not renew short-term leases of some of 31 Boeings earlier flown by bankrupt Jet Airways, when they expire in the next few months. It may review plans to wet lease — leasing aircraft and crew. The airline has diverted 4-5 planes used on international operations to domestic routes. “We are running nine planes behind the delivery schedule for the Airbus A320Neo planes due to problems at the plane and engine maker. Now this has become a blessing in disguise for us,” said a senior executive at GoAir.

from Economic Times https://ift.tt/38QMWoa