Seat capacity drops up to 100% on China, SE Asian routes over Coronavirus

The weekly seat capacity of domestic and foreign carriers on China and South-east Asian routes declined up to 100 per cent in March over December due to the deadly coronavirus pandemic, according to the Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation (CAPA).

However, at the same time, capacity to countries like the UK and France rose by 18.7 per cent, the CAPA data showed.

According to the CAPA, as against a total of 6,555 and 8,668 seats operated by Indian carriers and foreign carriers on the India-China route on the week commencing December 2, 2019, the number of seats dropped to 247 and 1,246, respectively on the week commencing March 9, 2020, which was 96.2 per cent and 85.6 per cent decline, respectively.

The number of international passengers arriving at the country's airports has reduced to around 62,000 per day from 70,000 in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak, Union minister Hardeep Singh Puri had informed Lok Sabha on Thursday.

He said the count might further come down to around 40,000 following the travel advisory issued on Wednesday.

There are 30 international airports in the country and on an average, these aerodromes receive about 70,000 international passengers.

On an average, something like 70,000 passengers come to different airports in the country.

The number of seats operated by overseas operators on the India-South Korea route declined 100 per cent in that week as compared to 2,586 seats operated in the first week of December last year while the capacity by the Indian carriers dropped 50 per cent seats to 512 as against 1024 on the week, starting December 2, the CAPA said.

The capacity operated by India carriers on India-Japan route fell by 25 per cent while by foreign operators it rose 9.2 per cent in the second week of March, it said.

The number of seats flown by India airlines on India-Hong Kong routes dropped 100 per cent while by overseas carriers by 50.6 per cent in the week commencing March 9 as compared to the seats operated by both Indian and foreign carriers on the week, starting December.

The traffic on India Thailand routes also fell drastically with the Indian carriers reducing the capacity by 64.5 per cent and foreign operators by 21.4 per cent in the period, as per the data.

The number of weekly seats operated by both Indian and foreign airlines on India-Malaysia and India-Kuwait also dropped significantly.

The traffic on India-Italy route operated by the Indian carriers declined by a massive 42.9 per cent while it remained flat for the overseas airlines at 1,799 seats per week.

However, the weekly domestic carriers operating on India-UK route saw an 18.7 per cent jump in weekly traffic while the foreign carriers had a 2.3 per cent increase during the week commencing March 9 as against the week started on December 2.