Team News Riveting
Even after resuming the service from May 25, Indian aviation sector did not have a smooth flight.
For July 2020, the domestic passenger traffic was 20.6 lakh, as against 118.6 lakh in July 2019, registering de-growth of whopping 83 percent year-on-year (YoY), rating agency ICRA said in its report. It witnessed a sequential improvement of -4 percent over 19.8 lakh domestic passenger traffic in June 2020, which had witnessed a YoY de-growth of 83.5 percent.
The domestic airlines are operating at a much lower capacity, about 27 percent in July 2020 of their July 2019 capacity (24,200 departures in July 2020, as against 88,200 departures in July 2019). However, the same is a marginal increase over the 25 percent capacity deployed in June 2020.
On the Day 1 of resuming the service, passenger traffic of 30,550 was recorded that gradually increased to 72,583 on Day 21. Since then, the daily passenger traffic has remained above 57,000. It peaked to 84,377on Day 69 (July 31, 2020).
The number of flights departing has also gradually increased from 416 on Day 1 to 890 on Day 69 (July 31, 2020). For July 2020, the average daily departures were 780, significantly lower than the average daily departures of 2,845 flights in July 2019, though better than 723 in June 2020. The average number of passengers per flight during July 2020 was 86, as against an average of 134 passengers per flight in July 2019.
Thus, it is expected that the domestic aviation industry operated at a passenger load factor (PLF) of 55 percent in July 2020, as against 86.3 percent in July 2019 on a very low capacity. The PLF for July 2020 has sequentially moderated from 58 percent in June 2020 due to the increase in capacity deployment by 11 percent.
ICRA maintained that second half of the financial year 2020-21 would witness some recovery, with quarter four witnessing YoY de-growth of just 3-14 percent in domestic passenger traffic with improved PLFs.
The FY2021 was likely to witness 41-46 percent de-growth in domestic and 65-72 percent in international passenger traffic.
