Daily airport footfall only 10% of pre-Covid figure

Bhubaneswar: The current daily footfall at Biju Patnaik International Airport here is only 10% of what it used to be before the Covid pandemic shut down domestic and international flight services. The average daily footfall at the airport before the suspension of domestic flights was around 15,000; now the number of passengers of all flights taken together (arrival and departure) is around 1,500.
At present, 10 flights of five airlines — Air India, Vistara, IndiGo, Air Asia and Alliance Air — are operating from Bhubaneswar to Delhi, Kolkata, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chennai, Mumbai and Jharsuguda. Domestic services started here on May 25, as part of the resumption of flight services all over the country. On that day, 600 passengers passed through the airport.
An airport source said the capacity of an A320 aircraft was 180 seats, but none of the 10 flights operating out of the airport here is being booked to capacity. On an average, the number of seats booked per flight is between 90 and 160, the source said. Besides, only 12 to 30 passengers are travelling on the Bhubaneswar-Jharsuguda sector, which is serviced by a smaller aircraft with capacity of around 90. Except the Bhubaneswar-Delhi and Bhubaneswar-Bengaluru sectors, which have two flights each daily, all other destinations are being served by a single flight.
In the first week of May, the average daily passenger count on the flight to Kuala Lumpur — the state’s only direct international flight — had come down to 76. It was the lowest on March 2 — 36 passengers.
Airport authorities hope that with more flights being added, the passenger count would go up in the coming days. “Given that services have just resumed, a footfall of 1,500 is good enough. The passenger flow will pick up from the middle of June,” said an airport official.
“Since the government has decided to open hotels with 30% capacity, business tours are expected to start soon,” said an officer. Hotelier Debashis Patnaik said the passenger flow should ideally increase provided that the number of infection did not rise further.
An official source said passengers flying now were mostly people who were stuck in Odisha during the lockdown.
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