Indian airlines will lose $8b due to Covid, says CAPA

Bloomberg

Indian carriers are expected to incur a loss of $8 billion by 2022 as the second Covid-19 wave puts any travel recovery on hold.
IndiGo, India’s largest airline, and Air India Ltd will account for $4.5 billion of losses, CAPA Centre for Aviation said in its report India Airline Outlook for the fiscal year 2022. Indian carriers will need about $5 billion to survive but have access to only about $1.1 billion funds through initial public offerings, sale of new shares and other
instruments, it said.
India’s spike in infections has paralysed the country’s air travel industry, which had begun to show signs of recovery, particularly in domestic routes. SpiceJet Ltd, India’s second-largest carrier, has reverted to paying employees based on work hours and deferred salaries for May.
IndiGo is planning to raise
30 billion rupees ($411 million) by selling shares after being hit by the second wave.
“We have run out of words to describe the state of Indian airlines.” CAPA said. “But as we have repeatedly emphasised, the industry is standing on the edge of a cliff. This is true even for airlines with access to large pools of capital.”
CAPA is expecting domestic traffic will drop to 80 million passengers from 140 million in 2020 and a moderate recovery will begin in June with an acceleration in traffic from the
second quarter of the financial year ending in March.