As airlines struggle to keep afloat during the pandemic, the government is trying hard to ring-fence its citizens from the virus.
As a first step towards meeting the government’s expectations halfway, airlines are rolling out incentives to passengers who have taken at least one dose of vaccination while some others have fully vaccinated crew to helm flights. At the same time, in anticipation of the traffic recovery forecast by aviation consultancy CAPA in the second half of this financial year, airlines want the mandatory RT-PCR test done away with for passengers who have received both shots of a Covid-19 vaccine.
There is much to look forward to for the domestic airline industry as Civil Aviation Ministry data shows that air passenger traffic has more than doubled in the last few weeks. The average number of daily fliers rose to over 1 lakh for the week ended June 19, compared with 49,000 for the week ending May 23.
“We feel that some level of relaxation can be offered to fully vaccinated travellers for ease of movement across domestic and international destinations,” said Vinod Kannan, chief commercial officer, Vistara Airlines.
He believes this can be done through a mandatory solution (travel/ health pass) that is standardised for both domestic and international flights, to facilitate seamless and hassle-free travel, especially for fliers connecting from a domestic route to international and vice versa.
With vaccines increasingly administered across the globe, vaccine passports (or travel/ health passes) are expected to become a key requirement for the global travel industry in the future.
But the government has been extremely cautious and put a cap on airline capacity as well as fares. Since June 1, the capacity in Indian skies has been capped at 50 per cent; it was 33 per cent in May before it was gradually increased to 80 per cent and, finally, reduced to 50 per cent.
There are reports of a rethink of the entire structure. Minister of Civil Aviation…