Logistics

Chaos at airports as domestic flight operations resume after two months

Our Bureau New Delhi | Updated on May 25, 2020 Published on May 25, 2020

Passengers wait at Delhi airport's terminal T-3, as domestic flight services resumed on Monday, after two months of lockdown. PTI   -  PTI

Tweaking of flight schedules led to cancellation of several flights

Chaos prevailed at airports around the country as domestic flying resumed on Monday after a gap of two months. It is estimated that a little over 400 of the over 1,000 flights that were originally cleared to operate, were likely to operate on Monday. Delhi airport was forced to cancel over 80 flights to and from the airport on Monday.

Delhi is the busiest domestic airport and used to handle over 1,300 flights a day before the COVID crisis. On Monday Delhi airport had 118 aircraft arriving and 125 aircraft departing from it.

The chaos was on account of the authorities having to tweak the flight schedules of domestic airlines, which were approved after Hardeep Puri, the Civil Aviation Minister, announced that domestic flights will start from May 25.

Following the Minister’s announcement, airlines approached the authorities to file their revised schedules, in view of the new norm that one-third of the original number of flights will be allowed initially, when flights restarted.

But some states, including Maharashtra and West Bengal, said they were not in a position to receive flights immediately. In fact, Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray took to Twitter on Sunday afternoon to announce that he had spoken to Puri regarding domestic flights in Maharashtra. He said that till such time that MIAL (Mumbai International Airport Limited) planned and finetuned airport operations, they should initiate minimal domestic flights from the state from May 25, which were purely emergent in nature like international transfer passengers, medical emergencies, students and cases on compassionate grounds.

Delhi-Mumbai is one of the busiest air routes in the world. Eventually, the state decided to let 25 flights to land and take off from Mumbai from today.

Sources indicated that airlines had filed over 100 flights between Delhi and Mumbai, which were curtailed to 25. This meant that those who had booked on most of these flights could not travel.

The situation is likely to improve in the coming days, once West Bengal starts accepting flights from May 28, which will open up prospects for connecting more cities in the North-East. Many of the flights to the North East pass through Bengal.

Sources also indicated that Maharashtra could accept more flights after June 1. This should ease the situation as many domestic airlines not only connect the two metros, but extend flights to other cities from them.

Published on May 25, 2020

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Domestic flight services resume in India after two months