KOLKATA: More than 60%
flights that dotted the sky in the
Kolkata flight information region (FIR) in February 2020 are back in air despite Singapore, Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur — major airline hubs in the region — yet to resume operations.
Air traffic controllers, too, are back to being their busy selves. For two months beginning April, their workplace that used to always buzz with transmissions between the controllers on the ground and pilots in the sky had suddenly gone silent. Now, the chatter is back. From hardly any flights to monitor earlier in the year, they witnessed a steady rise in flight activities since June and a sharper spike in operations in September and October. The recovery would have been more impressive had curbs on flights from six high-traffic cities to Kolkata been lifted.
“Given the current trend, we expect 70% of the flights that traversed Kolkata FIR prior to the
pandemic to be back in air by January 2021. Already, the number of controllers that are deployed in Kolkata to track and guide flights criss-crossing the sky has been increased to 70% after being whittled down to the bare minimum when the lockdown came into force in March-end and hundreds of flights were grounded,” said air traffic services general manager R S Lahauria.
In the initial days of the lockdown, half the air traffic controllers in each shift were kept on standby to ensure that Kolkata ATC continued to function even if a controller in one shift got infected and required all others in that shift to be quarantined. But with flights on the rise, providing the buffer manpower is proving to be a challenge.
Of the 38,945 flights that streaked across the sky in October in the Kolkata FIR that spans 18.5 lakh sq km, 8,525 flights landed or took off from Kolkata. This figure could have been around 10,000 flights had daily flights been allowed to operate to the city from Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Ahmedabad, Pune and Nagpur. At present, they operate only three days a week.
The remaining 18,228 planes that passed through the Kolkata FIR were overflights, or aircraft that flew over Kolkata without landing or taking off from here. Of these, 11,303 planes overflew India. The strategic location of Kolkata FIR means flights between South-East Asia and Australia to the east and south-east and Gulf, Europe and the US to the west and north-west fly through this airspace.
In October 2019, the flight count in Kolkata FIR was 63,906, of which 48,700 were overflights. The flight count increased to 64,648 in November 2019 before it hit the first Covid bump. Early reports of a yet-to-be identified strange flu in China saw the number of flights dip to 51,400 in December. Though the flight count soared to 69,531 in January 2020 as travel resumed, it again slowed down in February as the novel
coronavirus began to spread beyond China. The controllers in Kolkata saw the flight count decline from 62,330 in February to 49,752 in March. And then as India went into a lockdown, it nosedived to 9,564 flights in April.
After a brief lull, overseas repatriation flights began to operate in May along with cargo flights that shipped critical medicines and medical equipment. When domestic flights resumed operations in May-end, the flight count jumped from 14,724 in May to 25,081 in June. Since then, growth has been steady with the skies being opened up gradually. In September, the airport handled 31,721 flights, half as many flight controllers in Kolkata had handled in October 2019.
“The second wave of infection in Europe is also delaying international air travel to European destinations. Once Gulf-based airlines like Emirates Airlines, Etihad Airways, Qatar Airways deploy their full fleet and Thai Airways, Malaysia Airlines and Singapore Airlines resume operations, air traffic in Kolkata will be as busy as ever,” Lahauria said.