Like I’ve mentioned before, 650 aircraft approximately across the country have been grounded at the moment because firstly airlines were told they could not fly passengers from March 25 to March 31, 2020, and then their grounding was extended in line with the government imposed lockdown of April 14, 2020.

The last time around, I was tracking the information ahead, and Air India had already cancelled their flights between March 25 and March 31 even before the DGCA order to ground all operations were publicly notified.

Now, Air India has further extended its flight cancellations or at least stopped selling tickets, till April 30, 2020. In short, they are not selling any tickets on any flight till April 30, 2020, at the moment. Have a look; Air India is selling neither international nor domestic flights at the moment.

Other carriers continue to sell tickets from April 15 onwards. Here is a screengrab from IndiGo just now.

Now, if this is the representative of anything, it is this, Air India has information perhaps not publicly notified at the moment, on the back of which the airline has extended their flight grounding till April 30, 2020. While I did not get a screengrab from earlier in the day, but I have personally seen Air India selling tickets from after April 14, 2020, and so have others I know.

In a question posed to the top aviation bureaucrat of India yesterday, they were cagey about a reply. Have a look:

Reminded me of how I would answer questions in exams, where I had no clue about that topic. pic.twitter.com/Fy5r2UVEEL

— SG (@shrinivassg) April 2, 2020

Bottomline

It might be Air India taking a safe bet that operations won’t resume right after the flight ban gets over on April 14, 2020, or they may have been made aware of some new information which is not publicly notified at the moment. I would expect once this notification if any comes out, you might see other airlines cancel flights again as well.

It would then be better to not make any flight plans for April 15 at the moment, given there is still no clarity on how operations will be on April 15, 2020. Wait it out a bit to get more clarity on how to fly, and only fly if you have to!

What do you make out of the new move of Air India?

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