IATA urges India to lift travel curbs, price caps

International travel is not just about holidays. It is about connecting people, connecting families and connecting business. And the travel restrictions are causing great disruption and continue to put jobs at risk - not just in the airline and tourism industry, but in other industries as well.

We then see domestic passenger markets, as we've talked about before, recovering strongly. The global figures hide the fact that in India, for example, the domestic market is highly regulated at the moment with the government imposing both capacity and pricing restrictions, which is slowing down the recovery. Without those restrictions, I've no doubt that the domestic position in India would be significantly ahead, said Willie Walsh, IATA's Director General.

As India's devastating second wave of Covid-19 subsides, domestic airline capacity is once again rebounding strongly. Airlines have been adding back service in response to easing travel and capacity restrictions, and load factors are also increasing.

But international travel continues to lag significantly behind - still only about 20 per cent of where we were in 2019. And I think the message is simple. It's clearly not where we expected to be, particularly in the context of transatlantic.

Total demand for air travel in June 2021 (measured in revenue passenger kilometers or RPKs) was down 60.1 per cent compared to June 2019. That was a small improvement over the 62.9 per cent decline recorded in May 2021 versus May 2019.

So as we move forward, I think it's important that we reaffirm the need to get back to face-to-face meetings, the need to re-establish direct connectivity, and the need to base decisions on the data and the science, which would give governments very good reason to relax or remove the restrictive measures that they continue to have in place for people who are travelling internationally.

Indian airlines incurred a loss of $4.1 billion loss in the current fiscal (2021-22), with another $3.9 billion losses reported in the last fiscal, according to a June 3, 2021, report by aviation consultancy and research firm, Centre for Asia-Pacific Aviation (CAPA). "With each passing day the hope of seeing a significant revival in international traffic during the Northern Hemisphere summer grows fainter. Many governments are not following the data or the science to restore the basic freedom of movement. Despite growing numbers of vaccinated people and improved testing capacity we are very close to losing another peak summer season on the important trans-Atlantic market. And the UK's flip-flop to reinstate quarantine for vaccinated arrivals from France is the kind of policy development that destroys consumer confidence when it is most needed," said Walsh.