A STORMY FLIGHT AHEAD

India’s airlines are staring at aggregate losses of a staggering Rs 1.3 lakh crore by the end of the next fiscal year. The fare hike will bring some relief but not quite enough

- M.G. Arun

When the pandemic forced weeks of the shutdown of domestic and international air travel in India in end-March last year, SpiceJet chairman & MD Ajay Singh got down to some out-of-the-box thinking to navigate his airline through the impending financial crisis. Among the first things he did was put a dedicated fleet of nine freighters—five Boeing 737s, three Bombardier Q400s, and a wide-body A340—into operation. Between end-March and November 2020, SpiceJet operated nearly 10,000 flights and carried 77,000 tonnes of cargo, including essential items like food and medicines, to 41 international destinations. By October, it had emerged as the largest international cargo operator at the Delhi airport.

With revenue from passenger business drying up during the pandemic, airlines the world overturned passenger aircraft into temporary cargo carriers to make money and stay afloat. In India, too, airlines deployed dedicated freighters and even used overhead storage in plane cabins to ferry perishable cargo—mostly fruits and vegetables—and medicines. The margins were low as domestic air freight traffic fell by 74 per cent and international air freight traffic by 57 per cent in the April June 2020 period than a year ago. But airlines had few options—freight was the only business operational.

CRIPPLING LOSSES