Aviation minister Hardeep Puri said the initial hurdles in resuming operations were because a few states were not ready.
Aviation minister Hardeep Puri said
the airlines are equipped and precautions have been taken at airports where you
don’t need any human contact. (Photo @HardeepSPuri)
Some states were not ready
to resume domestic flight operations, said aviation minister Hardeep Puri,
underlining that they had to be persuaded to come on board. The minister talked
about the Centre’s exit strategy from the lockdown, why the government may not
be able to provide a financial bailout to airlines in an interview with Hindustan
Times’ Anisha Dutta.
Here
are the edited excerpts from the interview:
Q:
Domestic flight resumption took off with a lot of confusion over flight
cancellations. Has the situation improved now?
A: It is not correct to use the term confusion here. There
was uncertainty because some states decided to not resume flight operations on
May 25. We have had multiple discussions with them prior to the announcements
on the domestic flights. We had also issued a central SOP for domestic travel
but many went ahead and issued their own guidelines. Many of their SOPs came in
very late and our meeting with the airlines ended by around 9 pm. Many
cancellations occurred due to this.
The situation is now
stabilised and much better with just six cancellations on day two and 445
flight departures ferrying 30,944 passengers and 447 arrival flights with
31,697 passengers.
Q:
Would it not have been easier if states were taken on board prior to the
announcement?
A: The states have been on board from day one, contrary
to what is being said. Discussions with them started as early as May 15. When
we announced the resumption on 22nd, we had held several rounds of discussion,
before deciding to give it three more days. There were a few things. First,
whether the state is willing to accept, some states were not keen but when they
were told economic activity is needed, they changed their mind. Second, are the
airports ready? All our airports were ready on the 15th, airlines were ready
but they wanted six days’ notice.
What happened in this was
two or three states could not take flights, they told us very frankly our
doctors and all are not in a position, they are in a cyclone condition so we
said you take your time…It is not a question of explaining why but the press
became a commentator, it played headlines like “total chaos” and some people
said let’s not fly. What is the chaos? The chaos is on some flights being
cancelled. What are the reasons some flights are cancelled? It is very clear
because the state government has a problem. Second issue was that the SOPs were
issued by the states very late. Now the SOPs are in place. Andhra Pradesh has
opened up. West Bengal will on May 28.
Q:
There are a few Covid-19 positive cases reported in flights since the
resumption. Were you prepared for it?
A: We were. We have taken the precautions at airports
where you don’t need any human contact; you print out your boarding pass, your
luggage gets sanitised, then you are inside the aircraft with the protective
gear and the aircraft is also disinfected. We have taken as many measures as
humanly possible. But I keep saying there is a risk in everything. There is a
massive conflict between those who want things to desperately open and go about
their work and those who pick up any case and make a big thing about it.
Airlines are equipped to deal with cases. If they have a positive case and they
decide to ground the crew, the airlines will have to pay that price.
Q:
What about international flight operations, are we prepared to resume?
A: I don’t see that happening for some time.
International civil aviation traffic is dependent on something completely
different, it depends on other countries, international trade and business
activity. Will the demand of international traffic continue to be low, what
will be the new norm? Aravind Panagariya had said, even when you had big
disruptions earlier trade still picked up globally. I see it picking up again,
but it is too early to say. In India we have a pretty stable domestic traffic,
it will pick up as people will want to move.
Q:
But you had earlier said it could resume by August?
A: I was asked if you will
be able to start international civil aviation by August or September, I had
said we could do that even earlier. What does that mean? We have two months to
go. We are already scaling up the number of people we are bringing back through
Vande Bharat Mission. Our idea was to bring those people back who were
genuinely stranded and distressed. But many of the people coming back are not
stranded in the manner in which we originally envisaged when the scheme was
announced.
Q:
How much is your estimate of the total debt in the aviation sector?
A: You can only do a damage assessment when the
resumption has taken place because the damage is on a continuing basis.
Q:
Do you see any Indian airline closing down?
A: I hope not but they are under stress. I am not going
to get involved in that but there are two issues involved. As a government, we
have to be acutely cautious and mindful of all that needs to be done on the
health factor and make sure people are safe and that is paramount, but equally
we also have to be conscious about what is happening to the economy. It’s been
two months since airports and airlines have not had any revenue, even parked
aircraft on ground also cost money. And even if you don’t have 100% flights
running, you can at least have some cost being recovered.
Q:
When can we expect a financial bailout of the sector?
A: First of all if financial bailouts were taking place
why would so many global airlines have gone bust?... It is a difficult
situation. We have given a large number of measures to mitigate their stress.
But I am not sure that the system as it is structured right now is geared to
giving any bailout. Even the media sector is facing a lot of financial stress,
many newspapers are going to go and channels are also facing problems. Is the
government going to give a bailout? I can be polite and say, yes press is very
important but I don’t see that happening. The business model of airlines is
particularly precarious. But the government can’t give billion dollar bailouts.
It doesn’t happen for any sector in India. We will support their demands on
Aviation Turbine Fuel taxation, that will get rationalized among other measures
but we can’t bailout an individual. That will mean we are giving taxpayers’
money to bail out an individual business.
Q:
What happens to the Air India divestment plan?
A: It is on. Air India has to be divested, there is
absolutely no question on that. At this stage, to keep anything going by way of
subsidy is almost impossible to justify.
Q:
Will we see further easing of restrictions after May 31?
A: One hundred per cent. I am speaking in my personal
capacity, of course.
Q:
What is the exit strategy from the lockdown going forward?
A: Mr Rahul Gandhi says lockdown has been a failure. Let
us look at the situation, you had two months of lockdown, at the very least the
lockdown has succeeded in keeping the numbers at a very low level. The
mortality rate today is 2.7%. It has come down from 3%, total number of cases,
my figure may not be exact, at 150,000 and around 70,000 recovered. But the
lockdown achieved another significant objective—it kept the numbers low and it
gave us time to build the health infrastructure. We were able to go from
complete import of PPEs to a massive domestic production, where today we are
one of the largest producers of PPEs in the world.
Reviving the economy, agriculture sector, opening
factories, starting construction etc, that is the exit strategy.
Q:
So, you’re saying the main idea of the lockdown was to get time to prepare the
medical infrastructure, and be prepared for more cases?
A: When the virus hit us, we were one of the first
countries to act fast on it. I cancelled flights from China in a big decision,
we stopped flights to the extent possible from other hotspots, we began
screening, as our international airports we screened more than 15 lakh people
coming in, we evacuated people from outside and finally and most importantly we
were able to get a system in place to prepare our health infrastructure across
states. Our figure now looks high but the total number of deaths is very low,
about 4,000 or so, those are the number of deaths you have in five days in
traffic accidents. The mortality rate is 2.7% whereas for SARS it was 17%. You
have to learn to live with the virus.
Mr Gandhi said lockdown was a failure, what is plan B?
Lockdown has not been a failure, it has enabled us to control the numbers and
build your infrastructure and to prepare for the exit strategy.
You have to, in any system, take precaution, which we did
in a timely manner and succeeded in controlling the numbers. Being permanently
in lockdown is not a solution, you have to prepare an exit strategy. Mobility
is an essential part of the exit strategy. When you are in lockdown, the
economic activity takes a severe beating and you have to revive that. The
strategy is to open up the supply chain and start operation of essential goods
and services and mobility is very much a part of that.
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