Mumbai: As India returns to normalcy from the escalating military tensions with Pakistan, it lifted the closure laid on 32 airports across the northern and western parts of the country. Although the closure was officially lifted on Monday, the commercial aviation operations are expected to take a few more days to return to complete normalcy.
The rising tension between India and Pakistan after the former revenged the Pahalgam terrorist attack by launching Operation Sindoor, directly impacted the civil aviation sector.
The Airports Authority of India (AAI) and relevant aviation authorities including the Director General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) issued multiple notices to airmen (NOTAM) during the past week enforcing the closure of multiple airports to ensure the safety of civilians.
The Free Press Journal was the first to report on Wednesday that the closure of Indian airports had resulted in cancellations of 430 flights till May 10. However, the cancellations saw a huge jump after a fresh NOTAM was issued on Friday ordering the closure of 32 airports across the country till May 15.
As the situation started normalising from Saturday after a ceasefire was agreed, AAI lifted the closure on Monday and announced that these airports are now available for civil aircraft operations with immediate effect. However, it also recommended travellers to check flight status directly with the airlines and monitor the airlines’ websites for regular updates.
With AAI’s directive, the airlines also started announcing that they are resuming services from various affected airports. However, airlines have said that they will take a few more days to operate from all the affected airports with absolute normalcy. Air India announced that it will progressively resume flights to and from Jammu, Srinagar, Leh, Jodhpur, Amritsar, Bhuj, Jamnagar, Chandigarh and Rajkot from Tuesday.
India’s largest airline according to market share IndiGo, on the other hand, started its flight bookings and resumed operations from some of the airports. On Monday, it started its operations on Delhi-Chandigarh, Delhi-Jammu-Delhi and Delhi-Amritsar-Delhi routes and stated that it will resume more flights gradually across the network over the next few days. It had suffered the major brunt as it had to cancel more than 165 flights.
Spicejet, which had to cancel its flights to Leh, Srinagar, Jammu, Dharamshala, Kandla and Amritsar, also announced that its teams are working to resume normal flight operations at the earlier.
