Covid-19: India told airlines to stop selling tickets, but they wouldn't

Four of the country's top six airlines, which together control 80 per cent of the local market, are selling domestic flight tickets for as soon as the third week of May.

India ordered airlines this week to stop selling tickets. Hardly any listened.
Four of the country’s top six airlines, which together control 80 per cent of the local market, are selling domestic flight tickets for as soon as the third week of May, searches on their websites showed. That’s despite the government saying no decision has been made on allowing flights after the end of the nationwide lockdown on May 3, which means airlines should refrain from selling tickets until authorities give them the go ahead.

Aviation Minister Hardeep Singh Puri reiterated that no commercial flights will be allowed to operate until the spread of the coronavirus has been controlled and that the lifting of restrictions will only be considered later.

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Market leader IndiGo is selling tickets from June 1, as is Vistara, the local affiliate of Singapore Airlines, searches showed. SpiceJet, the nation’s second-biggest airline, and Go Airlines India, which has furloughed 90 per cent of its staff, are selling tickets from May 16. Tickets weren’t available on the websites of state-run Air India and AirAsia India, the local partner of Malaysia’s AirAsia Group Bhd.

“We are working on that. Hopefully will find ways to resolve soon,” Arun Kumar, the head of Directorate General of Civil Aviation, said in a text message when asked about the sales.

Vistara declined to comment. Representatives at IndiGo, SpiceJet and GoAir didn’t immediately respond to requests for comments.

InterGlobe’s shares slid 5 per cent on Wednesday and SpiceJet fell 3.5 per cent. The benchmark Sensex index advanced 2.4 per cent. InterGlobe is down 28 per cent this year and SpiceJet has slumped over 60 per cent.

Airline industry braces for prolonged recovery from coronavirus crisis

Carriers including United Airlines Holdings Inc and Air New Zealand Ltd have warned they are likely to emerge from the crisis smaller, and there are fears others may not survive.

International seat capacity has dropped by almost 80% from a year ago and half the world's airplanes are in storage, new data shows, suggesting the aviation industry may take years to recover from the coronavirus pandemic.

Carriers including United Airlines Holdings Inc and Air New Zealand Ltd have warned they are likely to emerge from the crisis smaller, and there are fears others may not survive.

"It is likely that when we get across to the other side of the pandemic, things won't return to the vibrant market conditions we had at the start of the year," said Olivier Ponti, vice president at data firm ForwardKeys.

"It's also possible that a number of airlines will have gone bust and uneconomic discounts will be necessary to attract demand back," he said in a statement.

ForwardKeys said the number of international airline seats had fallen to 10 million in the week of March 30 to April 5, down from 44.2 million a year ago.

Data firm OAG said several years of industry growth had been lost and it could take until 2022 or 2023 before the volume of flyers returns to the levels that had been expected for 2020.

Cirium, another aviation data provider, said around half of the world's airplane fleet was now in storage.

"While many of these will be temporary storage, many of these aircraft will never resume service," Cowen analyst Helane Becker said in a note to clients. "We believe the airline industry will look very different when we get to the other side of this."