Omicron could push air traffic recovery into fiscal 2024: Crisil

It said that a material impact on the credit quality of airport operators, however, is unlikely as the dip in revenue is expected to be limited by a likely strong rebound, and the operators have adequate debt servicing cushions, liquidity buffers and financial flexibility to absorb the blip in traffic.An analysis of the top four private airports — Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru and Hyderabad — which accounted for 90 per cent of air passenger traffic handled by private airports and 50 per cent of all passenger traffic last fiscal, indicates as much, the agency said.”The high infection rate of Omicron has resulted in several state governments and local authorities, such as Delhi and Mumbai, announcing restrictions on movement,” said Manish Gupta, Senior Director, Crisil Ratings.”In fact, domestic traffic is down by 25 per cent from the highs of December 2021 in the first week of January 2022 itself. Both personal and business travel will take a hit in January and February, leading to air traffic plunging an estimated 30 per cent sequentially in the fourth quarter of this fiscal.”This spill-over impact, the agency said, is likely to delay recovery of air traffic from “our earlier expectation of it happening in fiscal 2023”.



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