SpiceJet to suspend majority of international flights from due to COVID-19

In view of coronavirus outbreak, air carrier SpiceJet on Thursday announced to suspend the majority of its international operations from March 21 till April 30.

New Delhi [India], Mar 19 : In view of coronavirus outbreak, air carrier SpiceJet on Thursday announced to suspend the majority of its international operations from March 21 till April 30.

The suspended flights will be resumed as soon as the situation normalises.

"We are forced to temporarily suspend the majority of our international operations from March 21 till April 30. We will resume the suspended flights as soon as the situation normalises," said the SpiceJet in a statement.

SpiceJet's Kolkata to Dhaka flight will continue to operate as per schedule.

"Our Kolkata-Dhaka flight will continue to operate as per schedule. Our Chennai-Colombo flight will restart from March 25 while our Delhi-Dubai and Mumbai-Dubai flights will resume from April 16," it said.

On an average basis, the air carrier operates 597 flights to 62 destinations, including 53 domestic and 9 international ones. Singapore, Dubai, Colombo, Kathmandu and Bangkok are some of the international destinations that the SpiceJet connects to.

The International Air Transport Association (IATA) has said the global air transport industry could see 113 billion dollars of revenue losses for the passenger business in 2020 as novel coronavirus snowballs into a public health emergency. Earlier on Thursday, the Association of Asia Pacific Airlines (AAPA) said Asian airlines are facing revenue shortfalls of over 60 billion dollars this year as a result of sharp falls in demand which have already forced the grounding of over half the fleet.By the same token, it said, many of the one million workers are unable to work because of drastic reductions in operations due to COVID-19 pandemic.

( With inputs from ANI )