India's largest airline, IndiGo, will temporarily discontinue meals on board as well as run coaches at half their capacity. These are among its new set of operating procedures as it prepares to resume flights once the lockdown that followed the COVID-19 outbreak is lifted.
“We are looking at changing many of our operating procedures...we will deep clean our aircraft more frequently, we will discontinue meal service for a brief period and we will run our coaches at a maximum load of 50% capacity. We will be coming out with the new set of operating procedures very soon,” IndiGo CEO Ronojoy Dutta wrote in a mail to his employees.
As airlines grapple with uncertainty on whether the flight ban will be lifted after April 14 and which routes will be opened up first, they are preparing for a slow resumption.
“Our plan is to start the airline up slowly at first and gradually ramp up the capacity,” Mr. Dutta wrote.
The internal mail shows that air travel in the immediate future will be very different, and the changes the airlines make to their operations will be focussed on checking the spread of virus.
“We have always been very safety conscious and now we must be health conscious as well. With this in mind, we are looking at changing may of our operating procedures,” it said
