Civil aviation minister Hardeep Singh Puri said the resumption of the domestic airlines is not a decision that the ministry of the Centre can take alone.
The state governments, too, have to give their approval.
Now that lockdown 4.0 has been imposed till May 31 and no domestic flights will be allowed until then.
“As far as the Ministry of Civil Aviation is concerned and as far as all the stakeholders in the civil aviation ecosystem including Airports Authority of India, (AAI), airports in different cities, air carriers, are concerned, we have been ready to resume domestic civil aviation now for the last one week or so,” the minister said.
“We are absolutely ready and we could start domestic civil aviation at any time with a little bit of notice. Obviously, if we get the green signal today, it will take two or three days for the airlines to open bookings and for us to calibrate the number of flights we can start with,” he added.
The ministry also tweeted saying, it is not up to the Ministry of Civil Aviation or the Centre alone to decide on resuming domestic flights.
In the spirit of cooperative federalism, the government of states where these flights will take off and land should be ready to allow civil aviation operations.
India.com reported that many states were not in favour of resuming the domestic operations in the fourth phase as the numbers of coronavirus cases are still on the rise.