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Rating agency ICRA in its latest report has said that continuing on the recovery path, domestic air passenger traffic crossed the 10-million mark in November 2021 for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic hit the aviation industry in March last year. However, it said the new COVID Variant ‘Omicron’ has the potential to derail the domestic recovery too, if it becomes a source of a fresh round of lockdowns/ restrictions in the near term.

According to the report, after recording 1.23 crore domestic passengers in February 2020, domestic air travel demand dipped to 19.84 lakh passengers in the first month (June 2020) of the resumption of flight services on the local routes after a two-month hiatus. The recovery in domestic traffic continued till March this year when a more virulent second wave of the pandemic hit the country, resulting in domestic travel demand nosediving to 21.15 lakh passengers in May 2021. In the second phase of the recovery, domestic travel demand rose to 10.04-10.05 million (1.004 crore-1.005 crore) in November 2021 as against 63.54 lakh passengers recorded in the year-ago period, registering a robust 64 per cent year-on-year growth. The month-on-month growth, however, stood at 15-16 per cent in November over around 8.98 million passenger traffic in October 2021.

ICRA further said domestic carriers deployed 49 percent higher capacity in November 2021 vis-a-vis November 2020, logging around 80,750 departures in the month under review as against 54,132 departures in the year-ago period. On a sequential basis, it said the number of departures in November was around 12 per cent higher as coronavirus infections demonstrated a downward trajectory.