Long road to opening up airports in India

Many of them had even booked tickets for their respective destinations, without any assurance of whether their flights would take off post the first phase of the lockdown. 

While the DGCA denied giving airlines the green signal to resume services from April 15, the CISF has submitted a new plan to the Ministry of Civil Aviation, regarding safety norms for passengers. A two-hour prior reporting time, keeping a vacant seat between two passengers and providing sanitisers at entry and exit points, along with making it mandatory for travellers to carry gloves and face masks are some of the recommendations. And airlines like IndiGo and SpiceJet have readied their coaches and boarding stairs in line with COVID-19 norms. However, ensuring all-round compliance from all stakeholders, including passengers, employees, support staff and others, is going to be a challenge.

In Chennai, getting to the airport and back for most people would involve hiring of cabs. Almost every cab aggregator has stopped services at this point, barring a few who operate only on an emergency basis. Resumption of mass transport services without accounting for last-mile connectivity, usually taken care of by autorickshaws and taxi cabs, will be highly detrimental to the exercise. In this city, which offers metro and local train connectivity to the airport, opening up of the airways will necessitate opening up of mass transport systems, for which no social distancing norms have yet been put in place. Sanitising of cabs, train compartments, turnstiles, elevators, restrooms, bus coaches - essentially any surface that could be touched, there’s a whole chain of protocol that needs to be set in place.

Experts have cautioned against opening up both borders and public transport systems too soon. One only needs to look at the epicentre of the coronavirus to understand why loosening up the lockdown might not be the wisest decision. When China opted to lift travel restrictions in Wuhan, it immediately led to a spike with 108 new cases of infections. Of this, 98 were ‘imported’. Last week, the President of France, Emmanuel Macron, suggested the entire Schengen area should remain in lockdown and borders remain shut until September. This means a complete halt on air travel for at least another five months. The Indian government needs to lay down its game plan going forth concerning opening up of the nation’s lifelines.

And it needs to do this on priority, keeping in mind the challenges posed by COVID-19