Mayday in April

As India grapples with a largely self-inflicted second wave of the pandemic, air traffic has collapsed, just like the country’s healthcare system. Traffic plummeted by 75 per cent in a matter of weeks, and the market leader cut capacity by almost half of what it had inched up to after the first wave, as did the other carriers. Till February, traffic was reviving, March it held up but in April, there has been a collapse as expected.

Aviation experts and analysts said that the second wave was likely to be crippling for a sector that was already gasping for air.