New Delhi, December 28: Mumbai-Dubai and Delhi-Dubai were found to be the busiest international routes during the pandemic scare. The formation was given by the UK-based air consultancy firm OAG. It said that Delhi-Dubai is the 5th and Mumbai-Dubai route is the 10th busiest air routes in this month. The information was laid in terms of seat capacity deployment by airlines.
Historically, these two have remained the busiest international routed for India. As per OAG, the busiest international route is Dubai-London Heathrow (1.7 lakh seats) followed by Orlando-San Juan (1.6 lakh seat) and Cairo-Jeddah (1.4 lakh). Delhi-Dubai has 1.1 lakh and Mumbai-Dubai over a lakh seats this month, as per OAG.
Online travel firm Cleartrip said: “The uncertainty caused by pandemic has resulted in travellers preferring to book their travel close to the travel date. In (pre-pandemic) January-March 2020, 51% of the trips were booked within two weeks of travel date. However, post lockdown, the share of trips booked within two weeks before travel increased to about 81% in April-September 2020. We’ve seen this trend reverse to an extent in Q4 (67%).”
Also read: Domestic air passenger count drops by 51% from November levels of 2019
While the regular international air activity is suspended amid a new covid strain that have been found internationally, the air activities are only undergoing through India’s Vande Bharat mission and the air bubble arrangements mae by the government. Other than international flights, the domestic air traffic is gradually picking up its pace showing steady signs of revival. The Christmas celebrations witnessed a nigh number of citizens moving domestically. The higher number of domestic flyers was over 2.5 lakh since scheduled domestic flights were allowed to resume on May 25.
