Coronavirus unsettles airlines; govt embargoes int flights from landing in India for a week

New Delhi: It was an eventful day for the aviation sector with a number of significant announcements being made on account of coronavirus. While India’s largest airline IndiGo said on Thursday that senior employees would take paycuts as the pandemic has caused a “precipitous drop in revenues”, the Central government announced later during the day that no international flight would be allowed to land in the country from March 22 to 29.

Amid all this, Vistara announced that in the interest of “customer convenience”, it would be operating seven international flights from Delhi to Kathmandu and Singapore between March 20 and March 22.

Earlier during the day, India’s second largest airline SpiceJet announced that it was “forced” to suspend most of its international flights from Saturday onward due to the “unprecedented situation” airising over the novel coronavirus pandemic.

No international commercial flight will be allowed to disembark its passengers, foreigners or Indians, on Indian soil after 1.30 am on March 23, aviation regulator DGCA said on Thursday.

The regulator’s circular came after the Centre issued a statement that no international flight would be allowed to land in India from March 22 onward for a period of one week.

“No scheduled international commercial passenger aircraft shall take off from any foreign airport for any airport in India after 5.30 am on March 22. These instructions shall remain in force till 5.30 am of March 29,” the regulator noted.

In an email to IndiGo employees, its CEO Ronojoy Dutta stated: “With the precipitous drop in revenues, the very survival of the airline industry is now at stake…We have to pay careful attention to our cash flow so that we do not run out of cash.

“With a great deal of reluctance and a deep sense of regret, we are therefore instituting pay cuts for all employees, excluding Bands A and B, starting April 1, 2020,” the chief executive officer said.

Band A and B are the lowest brackets in salary class in which most of the employees fall.

“I am personally taking a 25 per cent pay cut, SVPs (senior vice presidents) and above are taking 20 per cent, VPs (vice presidents) and cockpit crew are taking a 15 per cent pay cut, AVPs (assistant vice presidents), Bands D along with cabin crew will take 10 per cent and Band Cs five per cent,” Dutta noted.