First, the numbers: India registered 7,097 new cases on Sunday, the largest ever 24 hour jump which takes the total to 1,38,526. The death toll: 4,024. India is now #10, surging past Iran. The primary cause for this escalation: Maharashtra whose tally has crossed 50,000. A new study predicts that India will hit its peak in late June, reaching over 7,500 cases a day. Er, aren’t we already at 7K?
The TLDR: The Union government ordered the resumption of domestic flights from today—in a limited fashion. But pushback from badly affected states like Bengal and Maharashtra led to last minute ‘modifications’, creating total chaos in flight schedules.
First, are there going to be flights or not?
Yes. The original directive issued by the government still holds… for the most part. And more than a 1,000 flights will take off today—and the daily target is 1,095. As per the plan:
What does “contactless” mean?
The process is set up to actively discourage any physical contact from the moment you reach the airport.
Ok, now tell me about this last-minute chaos.
Haan, so as is now routine with our government, they first issued a bada advisory… and then issued a series of modifications late last night. The reason: a big push back from states still struggling to contain the spread of Covid-19. Take Maharashtra, for example. The number of permitted flights swung wildly between Thursday and Sunday night. An airline executive sums up the chaos:
“After yesterday’s announcement by Mumbai Airport, we were on standby to cancel all flights to and from Mumbai, then we were told that 45 departures and 45 arrivals [per day] will be permitted. Finally it was reduced to 25 departures and 25 arrivals. We had to cancel at last moment and inform passengers. Things should have been done in a more planned manner.”
The result: airlines are dealing with lots of angry passengers who will not receive refunds for cancelled flights. Smarter airlines like GoAir decided not to take any bookings until today—once they know exactly what each state has decided.
Sounds like a real mess…
Making it even messier: separate quarantine rules set by each state. For example, Kerala has imposed a mandatory 14-day home quarantine for all arrivals. OTOH, there is no quarantine required in Gujarat or Bihar. In Karnataka, passengers arriving from states with a high Covid count have to undergo mandatory 7-day institutional quarantine. Times of India has a handy chart with a state-by-state breakdown.
As one airline official told Indian Express, it’s as though airlines are now responsible for enforcing each country’s visa requirements:
"To begin with, it may not be viable for us to fly to certain destinations with quarantine restrictions. Only a handful may want to fly in such cases. Airlines traditionally do not take responsibility for visa rules and similarly it is difficult to be constantly updated with the multiple changing local requirements."
The bottomline: Despite the chaos, 60% of the post-lockdown flights are full. Around 90,000 people have booked airline seats between 25 May and 31 May. But most of them are people who were stranded away from home due to the surprise lockdown announcement. Once that logjam has cleared, most Indians will not readily book a flight that promises to be both unpleasant and unpredictable.
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*Image: Ashim D' Silva on Unsplash.com
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