New Delhi:The air passenger load factor in India may once again go down in the coming days due to fresh spurt in coronavirus cases and travel restrictions imposed by several states -- like making Covid test report mandatory.
"Travel restrictions have again impacted the bookings and the decrease in domestic passenger load factor will be reflected in the next week. We are noticing a drop in the number of bookings as a sequence of the regulations mandating negative Covid-19 tests for entering few states," said an airline official on the condition of anonymity.
Stating that the rising Covid-19 cases in the last week are a threat to air traffic, a report by the ICICI securities on the Civil aviation said that a total of 2,85,000 people chose to fly each day in the week ended February 27, falling from 300,000 per day in the week ending February 20.
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According to the data provided by the Ministry of Civil Aviation, the number of domestic passengers on February 28, 2021, rose to 3,13,668 while on the next day i.e. on March 1, 2021, the number of passengers slowed down to 2,77,708.