As the covid-19 has since been stepped in to India, and climate of uncertainty is developed not only in Cargo and logistics industry but entire aviation industry where, most of the schedule carriers are reaching in the state of insolvency besides, huge job losses.
In the interconnected business environment, there is a serious risk of disruption of global supply chains, which may bring, significant losses in revenue and adverse impact to the economies. There is a great impact of the pandemic on Indian aviation and tourism sector and the travel bans across the globe have hit the aviation industry hard.
Since International and domestic travel is closed, the air travel to and from India will be all time low, followed by reduced demand of ATF.
Due to less movement of international cargo to and from Indian airports, the home consumptions, investment and the EXIM trade got affected.
Due to the imposition of the ongoing lock-down in the country, all passenger and freighter aircrafts are grounded and parked at major metro airports in the country. There is going to be a huge loss in terms of payment of parking charges by the concern airlines to the respective Airport Operator(s), which may result in all possible increase in air freight rates whenever the operation resumes.
As the rapidly evolving threat around the COVID-19 virus, has negatively been impacted the global economy as a whole and the losses to the business and investor community may increase further, depending on the extent of geographic spread of the virus.
Strategy to overcome the situation & AAICLAS’s initiatives
At present the sole attention of central and state governments and allied agencies is focussed, in finding the ways and means to contain the predominance spread of COVID-19 virus.
AAICLAS has supported the move of Government of India to exclude air cargo operations at major Indian airports from the purview of lockdown against the COVID-19 and assured to extended all out support in clearance of the COVID 19 consignments without disruptions from its cargo facilities at AAI Airports.
The State owned airlines and few more domestic carriers are actively moving through RCS-UDAN routes for distribution of medicines amongst the pandemic affected states.
AAICLAS is one of the monitoring agency, supporting the Lifeline Udan for the faster movement of medical consignments from one state to another. The COVID-19 consignments are being handled and faster clearance to the end user is being done, to and from AAICLAS Cargo Terminals at AAI Airports.
Necessary measures are being taken to safeguard the life and mitigate the financial and operational exposure of government, public and private sector employees and general public at large. The situation is being monitored closely by various teams/committee constituted for the purpose.
AAICLAS value the safety and security of its employees. In this regards, the norms of social distancing are defined, work from home culture is invoked and standard operating procedures are put in place to maintain the continuity in the air cargo operations in general and handling of critical products related services and comprehensive responses in particular at major airports.
At present AAICLAS is functioning with an interdependence strategy of keeping its employees, processes, technology, data and infrastructural facilities in better shape to face the challenges likely to arose immediately after the end of the ongoing lockdown, when due to the pendency, massive inflow and outflow of International and Domestic air cargo movements commences from its air cargo terminals at AAI Airports.
It is understood that the flights suspension, earlier declared for Delhi-Hon Kong and Delhi-Shanghai till 30th June 2020,is likely to be revoked soon.
Last not the least, AAICLAS have been maintaining the trust of its internal and external stakeholders with effective communications on the quality of services being provided to them during the ongoing crisis and continue to do so always.
