‘Indian airlines to hit 80% of pre-covid capacity by Dec qtr’
NEW DELHI: The Indian aviation industry will bounce back to 80% of pre-covid capacity during October-december 2021 period as about 9.2 crore domestic passengers are expected to take to the skies during financial year (FY22) and 14.4 crore during FY23, Morgan Stalney Research said in a recent report on the aviation sector.
“Overall, we estimate 9.2 crore domestic passengers in India in FY22 against 14.1 crore in FY20,” the report said, assuming that there are no further impact from the pandemic.
Air traffic picked after lockdown was lifted in May 2020, and rose every month till March 2021 before the second wave of Covid-19 hit the country.
During May, the government set a cap stating that India will be able to sell seats up to 50% of their total capacity on domestic flights citing high number of
Covid-19 infections and as travel demand fell during the second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Air passenger traffic in India rose for the sixth straight week during the week ending on July 10 as a fall in Covid-19 cases and easing of curbs by most states led more people to take to the skies.
The average number of daily fliers rose to 150,000 for the week ended July 10, from 135,000 fliers a week before, brokerage firm ICICI Securities said in a report.
The average number of departures rose to 1,486 during the week, from 1,408 in the previous week. The number of fliers per departure was improved to 100 from 95 during the previous week.
“As vaccination rollouts continue across the world, key markets are seeing a sharp rebound in domestic air travel,” Morgan Stanley said in the report.
“With the second wave appearing to ebb, airline passenger traffic is again seeing a modest recovery. Over the past week, daily airline passenger traffic reached an average of about 140,000, implying about 36% of pre-covid traffic (about 175,000 passengers on July 4, 2021, implying about 44% of pre-covid levels),” the report said.
“We believe that there is a significant pent-up leisure travel demand in the system and swift vaccination drive can aid the return of such demand,” it added.