Ready for Take-Off

As aviation bounces back, an unprepared sector copes manfully with the rush of traffic, and airlines battle shortage of aircraft and staff even as ticket prices have shot through the roof.

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What an extraordinary year this has been considering what IATA said in March 2021. It was subdued in its assessment for the year and saw Asia Pacific as the laggard as aviation slowly geared up for normalcy. In April McKinsey and Company in a long piece - Back to the future? The airline sector poised for change post-COVID-19 said: "It's difficult to overstate just how much the COVID-19 pandemic has devastated airlines. In 2020, industry revenues totalled $328 billion, around 40 per cent of the previous year's. In nominal -terms, that's the same as in 2000. The sector is expected to be smaller for years to come; we project traffic won't return to 2019 levels before 2024." 

Cut to October 10, 2002. A report in the Mint outlined how all projections were futile in this post covid era: "Indicating a strong demand for air travel, domestic air traffic crossed the pre-covid level on October 9 with airports handling 402,697 passengers and 2,732 flight departures. The average daily pre-covid air traffic in 2019 was around 400,000 passengers and nearly 2,900 daily flight departures were recorded. This is not the first time that the daily air traffic has breached the 4-lakh mark. The highest passenger count since the onset of the covid pandemic was recorded on Apr 17, 2022, at 407,975 passengers."