Civil aviation seeing V-shaped recovery

New Delhi: The country's civil aviation sector is witnessing a very strong V-shaped recovery with encouraging domestic passenger numbers, and the growth will continue in the coming years, Union Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia said on Wednesday.

After being significantly hit by the coronavirus pandemic, the sector is on the recovery path and the daily domestic air passenger traffic has been above the 4-lakh mark for the past few weeks. Against the backdrop of congestion at airports that has now eased, the civil aviation minister also said efforts have been made to ensure that airport operators put in place steps that will allow the decongestion of airports. In an interview, Scindia said the domestic passenger numbers are very encouraging and already, the number is around 111 million till November this year.

"I believe that the civil aviation sector has rebounded and what we in economic parlance say V-shaped recovery. A very strong V-shaped recovery. I do believe that (with the) value proposition that airlines and airports offer our customers, we are seeing greater participation and a greater desire to travel by air which is why we are looking at these very very high numbers. I am very confident that this growth in India will continue in the years to come," he said.

On Tuesday, the number of departing domestic air passengers stood at 4,15,426 while the number of departing domestic flights was at 2,883, as per the latest data from the civil aviation ministry. "Though there is a great amount of jubilation at crossing the pre-Covid 2019 number of roughly 4.15 lakh passengers per day consecutively in the last two weeks and at 4.35 lakh on December 24, I would lay more emphasis on the fact that if you look at the numbers throughout the year, in 2019, we were close at around 144 million passengers (domestic). "On a pro-rata basis till November, we were looking at around 95 million... today, at the end of November, we are already at 111 million, so we are up 15 per cent from that number on a consecutive basis till November," he said. About the current coronavirus situation worldwide and its shadow on the civil aviation sector, Scindia said Covid is always a concern.

"The very fact that we have very high Covid numbers across the world today from China to South Korea to Japan to European countries, it is certainly a concern. "We have to be careful, which is why we have put in place what the health ministry requested us and mandated us for 2 per cent screening of all passengers coming into India. Fortunately, we are not seeing that high positivity numbers at least currently... I think we need to still wait and watch the situation," he said. On congestion at airports, including in Delhi, the civil aviation minister said there was no anticipation of such a huge number of passengers during the festive season.