India’s outbreak stalls global travel rebound

The ferocious surge in new coronavirus cases that has turned India into the global pandemic hotspot has also reversed one of the airline industry’s biggest travel comebacks. Carriers in India had reached 87% of their pre-pandemic seat capacity through early April, based on a Bloomberg analysis of data from flight tracker OAG. That progress has now unravelled as the surge in infections led to a pullback in domestic flights, which make up the vast majority of the market. As of the start of this week, capacity had fallen to 71% of 2019 levels, a 16 percentage-point drop over three weeks, the data showed. Further eroding demand is a move by nations including Singapore, Australia, the United Kingdom and the United Arab Emirates to impose restrictions on visitors from India. Using weekly OAG data, Bloomberg has built a flight tracker to monitor the pulse of the global air-travel comeback. The latest update showed continued progress in China, while plans to increase capacity in the United States and Europe haven’t yet taken hold. With operators still cancelling flights from India, the number of seats offered globally may have fallen slightly from last week. India’s expansive domestic network made it one of the world’s fastest-growing countries for aviation before the recent Covid-19 outbreak. Short-haul carriers such as IndiGo propelled India to the world’s third-largest market. And earlier on in the pandemic, the South Asian country of 1.4b people won plaudits for enforcing strict social distancing rules that lowered the infection rate. But now, the country’s public health system is being overwhelmed by an aggressive surge in cases, with daily infections exceeding 300,000.<br/>