Early take-off: On resumption of air travel

Even after long negotiations with States, and with a truncated schedule, the Centre has found it tough to relaunch domestic flights. Several were cancelled on the very first day services were resumed after being frozen on March 25 Some Chief Ministers, significantly Uddhav Thackeray in Maharashtra and Edappadi Palaniswami in Tamil Nadu revealed apprehension about a premature resumption of civil air travel, as the spread of COVID-19 is unrelenting, and quarantine monitoring has its limits. The experience of flight cancellations, traveler disappointment and low capacity amongst States to track thousands of passengers must prompt a rethink on set up flights. Access to emergency situation air travel in a large country is a genuine expectation, and a targeted programme run efficiently can satisfy that requirement, without induced need produced by industrial flights. Returning to the drawing board to draft a plan for emergency situation trave l, utilizing documents and aggregation of such guests might be the short-term option. The dangers connected with domestic aviation have actually multiplied due to early bad moves in numerous States: mass events, political occasions and consumer crowding for panic purchasing have actually led to significant transmission clusters. The trajectory of fresh COVID-19 cases reveals that this was exacerbated by the mishandled reaction