How Hard The Indian Airline Sector Hits From Coronavirus?

No one could’ve imagined that a virus that once originated from Wuhan China will start tormenting the whole world. It impacted people, communities, markets, businesses, and whatever comes in its way. Due to its criticality, the Indian Prime Minister forced to announce a 21-days nationwide lockdown to contain this virus. However, it’s more than 17 days, still, we haven’t succeeded any bit. Instead, with time, the number of cases getting an increase. As a result, the pandemic started affecting other things, putting fears in people, and influencing the financial markets.

It put the market down by 30 per cent from its lifetime high of 12,430 from January in just a few months. It started a panic selling in the market due to which many investors incurred substantial losses in the market. Now the situation is this criticism that the coronavirus has a deep impact on various businesses and industrial sectors. One such sector that deeply impacted by this pandemic is the Indian airline sector.

The airline industry suffering from a drop in bookings as people stopped travelling to virus-affected destinations which results in a gradual drop in traffic with domestic travellers postponing flights and cancelling their bookings. The scale of pandemic made the cash reserves of airline companies running low. Many airline companies are on the brink of bankruptcy. It left no option for airline companies to asked most of their employees to go on unpaid leaves. If it keeps going, the employees may lose their jobs or see pay cuts.

Some airline companies start accepting the bookings in anticipation of easing of the lockdown after 14th April. But, even they are not sure whether the lockdown will lift up or further extend giving the circumstances are not under control. If the lockdown extends, which likely to happen as our PM is in favour of extending it, the worst fears of airline companies will come true.

 

It has been reported by IATA that around 29.32 lakh jobs (highest among the Asia Pacific countries) in Indian aviation sector will take a hit in the current year. Further, passenger demand will reduce by 47%.