Earlier this week, the decision to extend the India-wide lockdown till May 3, 2020, was made. Back in March, airlines were told to ground all aircraft in India and close operations temporarily. Then, it was decided that airlines across the country would park all their aircraft by March 24, 2020, 2359 hours, and not operate any flights till March 31, 2359 hours. You can read the full details of the initial grounding here. From there, the nationwide lockdown went into effect till April 14, 2020, and hence all domestic and international operations to India were ceased as well till April 14, 2359 hours.

The question, then, is when will flights resume. Different airlines have a different take on it, but one airline to watch out for is Air India. Air India’s closures have been usually a surrogate for what the government policy is. For instance, Air India shut down flight sale through April 30 before everyone else.

It turns out, Air India, on April 17, 2020, has started accepting bookings for international flights from June 1, 2020, onwards.

 

On the other hand, flights to the USA are going to start a day or two later.

For these flights, there seem to be social distancing measures in order as well. So, for a Boeing 777, here is the capacity that can be filled up on a plane as compared to the available capacity. This information is from someone working at Air India, and is subject to change:

• Boeing 77W:
  • 3 First Class seats (4 available)
  • 20 Business Class seats (35 available)
  • 200 Economy Class seats (303 available)
• Boeing 787
  •  9 Business Class seats (18 available)
  • 158 Economy Class seats (238 available)

 

Bottomline

Just because Air India has opened bookings for June 1, 2020 does not mean they will be flying that day for sure. This totally depends on how the situation evolves in the next 40 days or so. It also depends on the other country if they are accepting flights and passengers from India into their country at that point in time.

So, if you don’t think if you really need to travel at this moment, don’t book any tickets right now and wait for the traffic to actually start moving before you make any bookings. Especially, since you can see the Minister of Civil Aviation making such announcements on Twitter.

The Ministry of Civil Aviation clarifies that so far no decision has been taken to open domestic or international operations.

Airlines are advised to open their bookings only after a decision in this regard has been taken by the Government.@MoCA_GoI @DGCAIndia @AAI_Official

— Hardeep Singh Puri (मोदी का परिवार) (@HardeepSPuri) April 18, 2020

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