Budget carrier IndiGo Airlines has sketched out post lockdown plans that envisage its planes initially flying at 50 per cent capacity with no meals as it tries to conserve cash.
In a mail to the employees, chief executive officer Ronojoy Dutta said the company was focusing on its cash flows, examining all its fixed costs to minimise them.
“In situations like these, companies do not manage growth or profitability but liquidity. That means our singular focus is on cash flow. We are examining all our fixed costs and looking for ways to minimise them,” he said.
Dutta said IndiGo’s plan after the lockdown would be to first start the services and gradually ramp up the capacity.
“We have always been very safety conscious and now we must be health conscious as well. With this in mind, we are looking at changing
many of our operating procedures. The new set of procedures have not been finalised yet.”
“But we will deep clean our aircraft more frequently, we will be discontinuing meal service for a brief period and we will run our coaches at a maximum load of 50 per cent capacity. We will be coming out with the new set of operating procedures very soon,” Dutta said.
Unprecedented crisis
The outbreak of the coronavirus has caused an unprecedented crisis in the aviation sector. International flights have already been banned in the country since March 23 and India has suspended domestic flights since March 25. This has led to the grounding of over 650 aircraft.
India has imposed a 21-day lockdown till April 14 to curb the pandemic. Consequently, all domestic and international commercial passenger flights have been suspended.
However, cargo flights, offshore helicopter operations, medical evacuation flights and special flights permitted by Indian aviation regulator DGCA can operate during the lockdown.
Following the outbreak and suspension of flights, most airlines have announced pay cuts. Dutta had last month informed employees that he would take a pay cut of 25 per cent. Others, too, will have to take pay cuts of varying amounts.
All the changes in salaries were to come into effect from April 1, 2020. The airline had also said last month that it would trim its domestic network by 25 per cent.
IndiGo is the largest airline in India in terms of fleet strength. It has over 250 aircraft and operates 1,500 daily flights across 63 domestic destinations and 24 international destinations before the disruption brought about by Covid-19.
The domestic aviation industry, with most of its fleet grounded, is expected to incur losses of $3-3.6 billion in the June quarter because of Covid-19, consultancy firm Capa India had said in a report last week.
Domestic passenger traffic is expected to drop to 80-90 million in 2020-21 from an estimated 140 million in 2019-20. International traffic is expected to almost halve to 35-40 million in 2020-21, it added.
