India to lift all domestic flight capacity restrictions from Oct 18

New Delhi: The Centre on Tuesday allowed airlines to deploy full pre-Covid flight capacity on the domestic sector from October 18.

The capacity will be raised to 100 per cent from 85 per cent, which was set by the Civil Aviation Ministry on September 18, 2021, up from 72.5 per cent allowed in August and 65 per cent in July.

“After review of the current status of scheduled domestic operations vis-a-vis passenger demand for air travel in terms of the purpose specified in the initial order it has been decided to restore the scheduled domestic operations with effect from 18.10.2021 (October 18, 2021) without any capacity restriction,” the Ministry said in the order issued on Tuesday.

The domestic aviation sector was reopened on May 25, 2020 with a limited capacity of 33 per cent.

Since then, the operational capacity has only been increased in consonance with rising passenger traffic.