Domestic airlines to keep soar even in a turbulence

December 7 is celebrated every year as theInternational Civil Aviation Day. This year the theme of International Civil Aviation Day is – ‘Innovation for the development of global aviation’. This will be the theme for the next two years also. Due to the Covid pandemic, the last one and a half years have been really tough for the civil aviation sector like all other industries in the country. Now again a new variant of the virus (Omicron) is causing panic. However, industry experts are of the opinion that this time there will be little impact on the business of domestic airlines in India.
No doubt about it that in the coming days International flights will definitely be affected, but the Govt of India has already suspended the movement of foreign flights for an indefinite period. But domestic flights will remain unaffected. Even if passengers are decreased due to the Omicron variant of Corona, the problem will remain for a short span only. During the last two waves, the frequency of domestic flights got reduced, but the movement of airlines did not stop. This time also, even if there are restrictions by the authorities, the business will pick up pace again in the first quarter of 2022 itself, opine the aviation experts.
According to the Director General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), the number of passengers traveling by domestic airlines between January and October 2021 stood at over 62 million, as against 49.3 million year-on-year increase. This indicated a growth of 25.88 per cent year-on-year and 70.46 per cent month-on-month, respectively. Restrictions imposed after the second wave were relaxed on 18 October, 2021 and airlines were allowed to operate at 100 per cent capacity on domestic routes.
Domestic airlines have shown a lot of improvement in the last two quarters. Air travel bookings for the current month and January are seen better than expected. For the first time in two years, such a situation has arisen that on some routes, the ticket price is also going up. Union Minister of State for Civil Aviation, VK Singh told Parliament during the monsoon session in August that during the financial year 2020-21 due to the pandemic, Indian airlines suffered a loss of around Rs 19,000 crore, while Indian airports suffered a loss of around Rs 3,400 crore. Domestic air passengers declined by 0.3 percent in 2019-20 and 61.7 percent in 2021, it was told.
Recently, the government handed over the debt-ridden Air India to Tata Sons. There is also an atmosphere of enthusiasm in the aviation industry regarding the stock market’s Amitabh Bachchan i.e. Rakesh Jhunjhunwala’s Akasa Air and Jet Airways. Another airline, IndiaOne Air will also be seen in the skies soon. Jet Airways is in talks with aircraft makers like Boeing and Airbus to buy about 100 new aircraft. Akasa also has to buy a fleet of planes. Meanwhile, the performance of airline companies listed on the Indian stock exchanges has been mixed. In the January-December period, shares of InterGlobe Aviation, the operator of the country’s largest passenger airline IndiGo by market share, have gained 10 per cent year-on-year, while second largest SpiceJet’s shares declined 23 per cent.