The fall in aviation traffic, both international and domestic, as a result of the coronavirus scare is now apparent. The Airports Authority of India (AAI) has reported a considerable reduction in movement of flights and passengers between December 2019 and January 2020.
The figure for February is not yet available since AAI releases the data every 45 days, but, a comparison between the aircraft movement in the previous two months shows a definite decline. For the Rajiv Gandhi International Airport where all the passengers landing from international locations are being thermal-scanned to check for body temperatures, the figures are like this: if there have been 2,404 international flights in December, the number has fallen to 2,353 the next month. It points to the cancellation of several flights in January itself when COVID-19 was yet to turn into a pandemic as it has happened now with positive cases detected here and elsewhere in the country too.
The number of international passengers fell to 3,72,329 in January when compared to 3,76,558 in December. The scenario is no different for domestic air travel — 14,819 flights carried 16,87,237 passengers in December. A month later, domestic flights reduced to 14,556 and the passengers count too came down to 16,08,998.
Nationwide trend
If one takes into consideration the nationwide situation, the number of international air travellers has fallen with 65,64,572 in December and further down to 64,87,267 in January. Passengers travelling within the country also reduced their air miles with 2,48,29,088 travelling in January as against 2,52,88,719 in December 2019.
If the total number of international flights to the country was 40,293 in December, it fell to 40,283 in January this year. On the nationwide domestic travel front, it is slightly different with 1,94,199 in December and marginally higher in January at 1,95,213.
From this data, all the signs point to a steeper fall in flight movement and the international and domestic passenger count in February-March considering the rising number of cases in Europe, United States and West Asia.
