Mid-aged travelers enthused about air travel even as Corona cases soar: Report

Despite a surge in Covid-19 cases in the last 24 hours, travel tech firms are recording an increase in flight search queries for summer travel by people falling in the age group of 45-65 years.

New Delhi: Even as India reported close to 60,000 new Covid-19 cases in the last 24 hours, travel tech firms are recording an increase in flight search queries for summer travel by people falling in the age group of 45-65 years.

According to travel tech firm Ixigo, there is an increase in flight search queries for summer travel this year to destinations like Goa, Andaman and Nicobar, Coorg, Varanasi, Guwahati and Patna.

"We are observing a new trend of vaccinations picking up amongst Travellers between the age group of 45 to 65 who are eager to travel post getting vaccinated. Travel enquiries have increased 10-15% since the first round of vaccinations became available. Enquiries for international travel is also picking up for destinations including Maldives, Dubai and Seychelles," said Aloke Bajpai, CEO & Co-founder, Ixigo.

Rajnish Kumar, CTO & Co-founder of Ixigo said we are already seeing a renewed sense of optimism amongst travellers, in wake of the vaccine rollout. Demand and search queries for air travel are slowly increasing MoM, and domestic travel is on the road to a strong recovery.

"Domestic leisure travel is bouncing back and we are already at 70% recovery in terms of our monthly active users. On the international front, we are still at 40% of the pre-Covid range in terms of booking due to current country restrictions. Widespread and effective distribution of the vaccine will be critical to get the international travel numbers back to normal," he added.

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The travel tech firm recorded the New Delhi-Patna route as among the top ten routes booked for travel for Holi long weekend (27 March-4 April 2021). The other top nine routes witnessed by Ixigo were Patna-New Delhi, Bengaluru-New Delhi, New Delhi-Goa, Bengaluru-Patna, New Delhi-Bengaluru, Bengaluru-Kolkata, Cochin-Guwahati, New Delhi-Kolkata, Bengaluru-Guwahati.

Meanwhile, a report published by the State Bank of India on March 25 stated that air travel has slowly inched towards the level it was at, in the initial phase of COVID-19 In 2020 as visible from the 7-day moving average of a total number of flights tracked by flight radar 24, as global cases figures tumble and mass vaccination efforts gather speed.

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"However, a plethora of new variants emerging still make a case for being wary about the overall recovery in air travel," the report added.

Notably, Directorate General of Civil Aviation DG Anil Kumar, Ministry of Civil Aviation Secretary Pradeep Singh Kharola along with other senior ministry officials also chaired a meeting on Friday to discuss ways to enforce COVID appropriate behaviour among all passengers and stakeholders at airports.

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As of now, three Indian carriers are in process of putting 15 domestic flyers on the no-fly list. These passengers are likely to be barred from flying for three months, under the DGCA norms.