Amid Covid spike, demand for chartered flights soars

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, April 25

With a spike in Covid cases in the country, the demand for domestic chartered flights has gone up substantially. Wealthy Indians are hiring private planes for taking Covid patients from smaller cities to bigger ones for treatment.

An official of a leading charter flight operator said their planes had been busy for the past one week, carrying patients from remote areas to cities with better health facilities. “We have been flying as air ambulance for high net-worth individuals living in smaller towns, particularly in eastern India,” he said.

Sources said the fare of requisitioning a chartered flight or an air ambulance had gone up by two to three times. “The fare of an air ambulance from Patna to Delhi was around Rs 4.5 to Rs 5 lakh, but now it is nearly Rs 10 lakh,” said a source.

Meanwhile, airfare on India-US routes has gone up substantially after the US government’s advisory to its citizens to avoid travelling to India.

The average one-way fare for an economy class is around Rs 50,000, but for the past one week, it is hovering around Rs 1.5 lakh. “To escape stricter curbs, NRIs based in India and others want to fly back to the US immediately,” said an industry source.

The US government on Thursday put India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh and the Maldives on its level 4 travel advisory. Some other countries, including the UK, Germany, and the UAE, have also restricted air travel to and from India.