I’ve been receiving a lot of questions over the past few days about when can people start resuming their normal life and take off on a plane again. This situation has been caused because in India, no flights are operating at the moment. First, the Government of India shut down visas to access India, when they determined too many imported cases were coming into India. Then they decided of shutting international flights altogether. Third, they grounded all domestic aviation for a week. Now, as things currently stand, there are no commercial scheduled civil aviation flights that will operate till April 14, 2020.

There has been no guidance from the Ministry of Civil Aviation or the DGCA on the guarantee that flights will operate on April 15, 2020, onwards. This is how they have described it:

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

Now, in a situation like this, I understand that further assessment and orders are not something that can be predicted ten days out. So, this puts customers and airlines on two different sides of the equation. An equation which is not equal in the current times.

Usually, customers pay a fare and get to fly on a specific day. Payment for service and consumption of the service are two sides of the equation. In the current scenario, if one ends up paying for a service, there is no guarantee whatsoever if the service will be delivered, because it is a situation not in the hands of the airlines at the moment. They are looking at April 15 as the current day of operation, but what if, this lockdown gets extended and then they can’t operate flights on April 15, 2020, and onwards?

In this situation, airlines will do the same thing that they have been doing. Hand you out a credit shell/voucher for a service they were not able to deliver. And what you will be left with is a promissory note on an airline which may or may not survive the turmoil. (I am assuming the weaker players will again get weeded out, given no bailout is coming, YET). What you need is a refund, and hence this equation becomes unbalanced.

Air India has already shut reservations till April 30, 2020. What do they know that the others don’t yet? The official line is, this is being done out of abundant caution. This abundant caution needs to be maintained by the customers as well.

If you are worried about a fare being cheap right now and expensive later, I don’t think that will be the case. Given everyone will start from zero demand again, and the business travellers won’t be in the market (assuming corporate risk departments still keep them grounded), I’d expect prices to be low for a while going ahead if airlines will be operating a full schedule. Even otherwise, your safety is a more significant concern than getting somewhere in the current times.

The bottom line is, get on a plane on April 15, 2020, only if you need to. And if you need to go, make sure you first see the grounding lifted on the airline before you purchase a ticket. Otherwise, be fully prepared to land yourself a lemon again (a voucher) and finance the working capital of an airline.

What are your thoughts on this issue? Are you booking tickets for travel in April 2020 yet?

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