Domestic flights to resume in ‘calibrated manner’ from 25th May, says Civil Minister Puri

On Wednesday, Civil Aviation Minister Hardeep Singh Puri announced the resumption of domestic flights from May 25, 2020. However, scheduled international flights, which were stopped on May 22, will stay grounded as of now. Flying, will not be the same while the battle against coronavirus remains.

Sharing the news on Twitter, the Civil Minister said, “Domestic civil aviation operations will recommence in a calibrated manner from Monday 25th May 2020. All airports & air carriers are being informed to be ready for operations from 25th May. SOPs for passenger movement are also being separately issued by  @MoCA_GoI”

Check out Hardeep Singh Puri’s tweet:

Domestic civil aviation operations will recommence in a calibrated manner from Monday 25th May 2020.

All airports & air carriers are being informed to be ready for operations from 25th May.

SOPs for passenger movement are also being separately issued by @MoCA_GoI.

— Hardeep Singh Puri (@HardeepSPuri) May 20, 2020

On Tuesday, in an ET Now webinar, Puri stated that he is informed of the difficulties that people have been dealing with. He said, “As far as the Ministry of Civil Aviation is concerned and as far as all the stakeholders in the civil aviation ecosystem including Airports Authority of India, (AAI), airports in different cities, air carriers, are concerned, we have been ready to resume domestic civil aviation now for the last one week or so.”

“We are absolutely ready and we could start domestic civil aviation at any time with a little bit of notice. Obviously, if we get the green signal today, it will take two or three days for the airlines to open bookings and for us to calibrate the number of flights we can start with,” said the Civil Minister.

Mr. Puri also stated that it would not be possible to keep the middle seat unoccupied, speaking to the news agency ANI, he quoted, “It’s not viable to keep the middle seat vacant. Even if you keep the middle seat vacant you’ll still have a situation where the prescribed distance for social distancing isn’t followed. If you were to do it then you’ve to hike up airline ticket price by 33 percent.”

It's not viable to keep the middle seat vacant.Even if you keep middle seat vacant you'll still have a situation where prescribed distance for social distancing isn't followed. If you were to do it then you've to hike up airline ticket price by 33%:Civil Aviation Minister HS Puri pic.twitter.com/9LfiI9tAA3

— ANI (@ANI) May 20, 2020

As of now, the total number of coronavirus patients in India rose to 112,359. India is among 11 countries that have over 1,00,000 cases but has fewer deaths.