CHENNAI: As lockdown restrictions are being eased, airlines and railways have started to reintroduce trains and flights that were cancelled due to poor patronage.
Chennai airport saw the number of departures increase from 30 to 35 flights in mid-May to 44 flights on June 9 while railways have resumed a few trains including a Rajdhani service to Delhi as passengers are returning.
More people have started to travel.
The state government has started to allow people to travel by cars inter-district with e-registration.
This has helped people who take trains and flights from Chennai to towns in the south.
The airport was handling around 100 departures and an equal number of arrivals in the last week of April.
This reduced to 30, the lowest, on May 18 and has started to climb gradually.
The airlines had also cancelled or combined flights to key routes like Bengaluru, Mumbai and Delhi.
There were only three flights each daily to Bengaluru on Mumbai and six flights to Delhi on most of the days in mid-May.
This has now increased to five flights to Bengaluru, four to Mumbai and eight to Delhi.
The total number of passengers handled too has almost doubled from 1,700 to 2,000 departure passengers per day last month to 3,200 departures this week.
The passenger numbers show that more people are arriving into Chennai after restrictions were relaxed, said an airline official.
However, the number of flights and passengers continue to be lower than what it used to be in April.
Trains have started to see an increase in patronage when compared to that a month ago.
Railways have started to resume inter-state trains, add more coaches and also introduce new specials.
Latha R, who travelled to Dindigul on June 10 by Vaigai Express, said that te train was crowded.
“Only the middle seats were vacant in the chair car.
When I came to Chennai a month ago, I was the only passenger in a sleeper class coach,” she said.