In the past fortnight the Omicron variant of COVID-19 has seen the number of domestic flyers nose-dive. January 11 saw only 1.9 Lakh people flying within the country on 2061 scheduled domestic flights. This is less than half than 3.9 Lakh passengers on 2804 flights on December 26th 2021. Boxing Day had seen the highest post-Covid domestic passengers.
The data from the Aviation Ministry shows that the 2061 flights on January 2022 were just half-full. The occupancy of the Aircraft ranged from Vistara 50.7 percent to Spicejet’s 64.3 percent.
Airlines are showing the tell-tale signs of a family or a commercial organisation due to Covid as the number of infected people is steadily increasing. “Scores of our Airline crew members have been down with Covid. The number of infected must reach in the hundreds. As the number of flights being operated has seen a significant drop recently we do not face any shortage of crew members to operate them. But even then some of the flights had to be cancelled due to crew unavailability”, said a senior official of a leading airline.
The guidelines generated by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation(DGCA) for the management of Omicron have relaxed the norms on crew members returning to work after Covid. Covid positive members who are asymptomatic now need to home quarantine for seven days before being declared fit for flying duties from the eighth day. Positive crew members who are mildly asymptomatic can also return to work if their home-stay period is less than 14 days.
US and EU flight carriers had cancelled thousands of flights due to this very reason in the Christmas-New Year season. Indian carriers also have a majority of crew members down with Covid in this wave.