Civil Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia said on Monday that the domestic air traveller count could reach pre-Covid levels in another two months or so.
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Before COVID-19 began to spread in India in early 2020, daily domestic travellers were at four lakh per day or 1.27 crore passengers per month. On Sundays, there were 3.5 lakh travellers, according to the Minister.
“All things remaining equal, in the next two months or so, you should see us crossing pre-COVID levels in terms of daily passengers... that will herald new demand, new capacity coming in, both at airports and airlines,” the Minister said at an event organised by the All India Management Association (AIMA).
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Last month, various airlines altogether flew 64 lakh passengers or an average of 2.1 lakh passengers per day. But this was 42% less than the numbers seen in December 2021 before the spread of the Omicron variant of the virus resulted in States imposing new restrictions on entry and forced many travellers to cancel travel plans.
“In November, December, we started hitting numbers of 3.8 to 3.9 lakh passengers per day. We were almost back to pre-COVID levels... with Omicron, number of travellers tanked... we fell to 1.6 lakh per day. So we had a contraction of about 65-70%,” Mr. Scindia said.
During the second wave of COVID-19 between March and May, domestic traffic had fallen drastically, but from June onwards there had been a steady rise until January as consumer confidence returned.