New Delhi: Air India has now decided to stop flights to at least five European destinations owing to a drop in passenger carriage that was resulting in loss of revenue. This comes as the latest impact of the novel coronavirus pandemic on India`s aviation sector.

Future flights of the national carrier to Madrid, Milan, Copenhagen, Vienna and Stockholm have been scrapped effective immediately since it was not financially viable for Air India to operate on these routes. An internal note circulated by the Commercial Division of Air India states, "In view of the COVID situation, it has been approved by competent authority to close down following stations and become offline."

"The current IBOs (international booking offices) are to be recalled to India and the station will be handed over to GSA (general sales agent) after completion of formality of closure," the note went on to add. The IATA (International Air Transport Association), in its forecast in July had stated that global passenger traffic (revenue passenger kilometers or RPKs) will not return to pre-Covid-19 levels until 2024, a year later than previously projected. In addition, the IATA had said that for 2020, global passenger numbers are expected to decline by 55 per cent compared to 2019. This was a revised forecast from the one in April where IATA had predicted that the global passenger numbers could decline by 46 per cent this year.

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