After massive mismanagement and 82 flight cancellations on Monday, domestic flight services witnessed less chaos on the second day with numbers falling to 25 cancellations at Indira Gandhi International Airport in Delhi. However, just like Day 1, several passengers were informed about the cancelled flights only after they reached the airport, leaving them perplexed and baffled.
According to sources, more than 630 flights were cancelled on Monday in the entire country due to Central government’s latenight announcement about no flight operations in West Bengal and Andhra Pradesh and limited operations in other major airports such as Mumbai, Chennai and Hyderabad. However, Andhra Pradesh resumed 20% of pre-lockdown domestic flight services on Tuesday.
The airlines which were allowed to operate onethird of their pre-lockdown domestic services had to further truncate their schedules even on Tuesday leading to cancellations. Meanwhile, states like Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Bihar, Punjab, Assam and Andhra Pradesh, among others, have already made their stand clear on their respective quarantine policies. Some states have decided to put passengers in institutional quarantine while several others have talked about putting them in home quarantine. The unexplained cancellations have left the travellers in a fury.
Many of them expressed their anger on social media. Meanwhile, airports and airlines are seen to be following the government’s guidelines on social distancing, mandatory face masks, no food on-board, Aarogya Setu app, disinfection, scanning, etc. After a two-month-long suspension due to the Covid-19 pandemic, domestic flights resumed in the country on Monday with 532 flights carrying 39,231 passengers to their respective destinations. Around 630 flights were cancelled across the country on Day 1.