Air ticket price bands to go once things are back to normal

Air ticket price bands to go once things are back to normal

TIMES NEWS NETWORK

New Delhi:11.02.2021 

Stating that domestic passenger traffic is gradually picking up, Union minister for civil aviation, Hardeep Singh Puri on Wednesday informed Parliament that the ticket price bands are expected to be done away with once flight services reach pre-Covid levels.

Hopeful that normalcy would return in the summer schedule, Puri shared data on the phased reopening of air traffic to point out that when flights were opened up in May last year, there were only 30,000 passengers. However, on Monday there were about 2,87,000 passengers.

The civil aviation sector was completely closed down on March 23, 2020, and was reopened in a phased manner starting from May 25 last year in what the minister described to be “a slow and calibrated manner” by putting in place SOPs and provisions for seamless contactless travel among other measures.

On the way forward, the minister said that a decision to open beyond the 80% capacity will depend on the behaviour of the virus and an assessment that that all SOPs are in place.