Airlines may start booking for domestic travel from the first week of June

In India, airlines might start functioning for domestic travels from the first week of June. According to a senior aviation official, the airlines will start taking bookings 10 days before resuming service. Given the COVID-19 nationwide lockdown, all the airlines were grounded for commercial operations on March 25.

Though there’s no clarity yet on restarting international flight operations. The official mentioned in a business daily that flights will resume only after assessment of the situation with respect to the number of COVID-19 cases but the “expectations are that it should start by the first week of June.” He also said that they plan to give permission to all the “airlines to open booking 10 days prior to the restart of operations.” But this is solely for domestic operations and not for international ones.
Though private airlines in India have already opened advanced bookings for both domestic and international flights. One can see on their official websites that bookings have begun operating from last Saturday. Spicejet, AirAsia, Indigo, Vistara and GoAir are taking bookings with departures from June 1. However, Air India has not started any pre-bookings yet.

According to aviation consultant Capa India, the country’s aviation sector is expected to incur $3 - 3.6 billion in the June quarter because of the pandemic lockdown.
The resumption of bookings shows the poor financial condition of the aviation sector in the country. Airlines here are desperate to start as they are now running low on cash and the indefinite lockdown has forced hundreds of aircraft to stay grounded.