IndiGo is hoping to reach the pre-Covid level of total traffic, including domestic and international, by the second quarter of next year, said the carrier’s CEO Ronojoy Dutta.

Indigo is currently operating around 40 percent and 30 percent of its pre-Covid domestic and international flights, respectively, and it does not plan to lay off any employees this year, Dutta told PTI in an interview. In July last year, India's largest carrier had laid off 10 percent of its workforce due to the coronavirus-induced economic crisis. IndiGo was operating 80 percent of its pre-Covid domestic flights in February before the second wave of the pandemic hit the country. Dutta said the traffic fell in April and May.

"It bottomed out on May 18 and at that point, we had gone down from 1,200 departures to about 400 departures. That is how bad it was. Since then, we have started recovering. The domestic growth observed post May 18 tells us that the hesitancy regarding air travel, which was observed among people during the first COVID-19 wave, is no longer there, he added.

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