Is it safe to fly in India despite COVID-19?

Is it already safe to fly around in India right now? We are on the downward slope of the second wave with official daily new infections at around 60,000. India is opening up in many parts, which some call premature - look at Delhi for example, and many of us are making our travel plans already once again. However, the big question is if it is safe to fly right now for leisure trips? Or should air travel be restricted to essential travel only?

Now this is a difficult question to answer and it’s likely I’ll spoil my relationship with airlines forever and never get a project from them again. Not that I am getting any projects anyway from them, except of course the kind that I do not want to do. At all.

In this article, I’ll look at these overall areas:

1. Is air-travel safe or not? 
2. Who should travel during the pandemic?
3. What can be done to make air-travel safer?

However, if you prefer to watch a video on the subject, you can watch it on my YouTube channel.

 

Is it safe to fly?

If we look closely into this, there are two aspects to safety during air travel - virus spread and transmission during the flight, but also and perhaps equally important is how a virus travels from one country to another.

So let’s take a step back and try to understand how the virus spread across the world in the first place.

COVID-19 was first identified in Wuhan but within a couple of months after the first case was reported, it had already spread to most of countries. How did this happen, you might ask? Well, the answer is our highly interconnected world - interconnected by flights. So even if the virus wasn’t spreading within the aircraft, it was spreading because of people flying.

This isn’t only then - even today the Delta variant which was first identified in India has now become the dominant variant in UK and the culprit for spreading the virus is flying. And this will continue to happen for future subsequent variants for Covid as well, unless we completely stop flying, which of course isn’t feasible or practical.

Now let’s look at our personal risks of catching the virus when we take a flight. When we look at flying, let’s not just look at the in-flight risks, but risks associated with the entire experience of flying - right from the time you leave your home. Let’s look at a flight you might take from Mumbai to Delhi during the lockdown. Now, both the cities had restrictions which prevented people from stepping out of their homes, but if you were flying you could. Your first point of contact would most probably be the cab driver - he/ she could be a symptomatic, which is how most COVID-19 carriers are, and just by being in the same space you might catch the virus. However, this isn’t the biggest risk, bigger risks wait for you ahead at the airport. 

I’ve flown a few times during the pandemic in the last six months, and I can say form my experience that even though you might think otherwise, the airports aren’t much less crowded compared to what they were before the pandemic. Yes, on some days it looked quite empty, but on other days, it seemed things were almost completely back to normal. And this is where the second risk comes - just by being in this closed space, often in close contact with many others. Most airports usually have good compliance when it comes to masks, but surprisingly not all - especially the ones in smaller places. Social distancing could certainly help, but more often than not, it’s a pipe dream. 

Once you are inside an aircraft after queuing up numerous times at the airport, you will be in a confined space with hundreds of other people with no social distancing. Yes, masks are usually worn by most, but the compliance to face shields (which are meant to provide extra protection) is low. 

The risk of catching the virus is there at the airport, in the flight as at the destination. You might catch the virus yourself, and even worse spread it to those you are visiting. 

What’s happening in the West right now? Well, in US, you don’t have to wear a mask if you are fully vaccinated but you do have to wear one if you are flying. But they have a large chunk of population (40% as of today) fully vaccinated. Europe is far more conservative and has similar guidelines to us. However, they are getting ready to travel again as summer break is coming up soon. However, they both have higher percentage of population vaccinated, so we can’t really follow their trajectories. 

So in my opinion, in the current times in India, flying is certainly a risk with respect to Covid-19. 

Who should fly?

This is an easy one to answer but a challenging one to implement as it would require some self-regulation from our side as well. After months of being locked in, many of us are desperate to get outside again, travel again and feel alive again and that's completely understandable. However, I would suggest caution not this - at least right now. Maybe in a few days or weeks, it'll be safer to fly again for tourism but for now, I think air travel needs to be restricted to essential travel only.

So what exactly is essential travel? This is also difficult to answer as there are no government guidelines on this. I would let the individual traveller to decide on their own if their travel plans are essential after giving it a lot of thought. For many of us, Covid-19 is something that happens to someone we know, but we feel we are immune to it until we or our family is directly impacted by it. My only suggestion is to put all travel plans on hold for a while and travel again only when it's safe again.

What can we do to make air travel safer?

1. RTPCR test for everyone who’s flying. Make it a national guideline like it was when we restarted flights back in May 2020.  Maybe re-introduce quarantine also in some areas - it's already there in some cities and states, but it's usage needs better implementation.
2. Adherence to COVID guidelines, both within the airport as well as in the flight. Really check and ensure that people wear masks and face shields. Be strict about it and make rules that can temporarily ban those who don’t follow these guidelines.
3. Discourage flying instead of encouraging it. And this especially goes for airlines which had run campaigns on social media about how safe flying with them was. I think such campaigns were misplaced and timed in appropriately. Right now is the time for extra caution. I do also wish airlines could always keep the middle seats empty - I know it might not be economically feasible, but it’ll certainly help with a bit of social distancing within the aircraft.  
4. And finally we the people can also play a big role in this by not making any travel plans unless it’s essential travel - I would leave that to each of us to sensibly decide. Also, we need to adhere to guidelines when we fly - the authorities and the airlines can only go so far without complete support from us all.
5. Minimise contact with co-passengers - keeping the middle seat empty could be one way to do it. Nots urge if it’s financially feasible for the airlines though.