80% passenger respondents of survey find air travel ‘safest’

A high 80% of passengers who responded to a survey were convinced that air travel was the safest mode of transport, and airports were safer than other locations. The ‘Voice of Pax’ survey was commissioned by the Bangalore International Airport Limited (BIAL).

Conducted over five phases from April 2020 to July 2020, to understand passenger sentiments around air travel, the survey revealed that initial negative perception about travel due to the fear of Covid-19 has undergone a positive transformation since the resumption of air travel on May 25, 2020.

Intent to fly among respondents improved from a mere 13% in Phase 1 to 33% in Phase 5, a significant jump indicating a higher positive disposition towards air travel. Safety enhancement and hygiene measures at airports including the Kempegowda International Airport (KIA) contributed to this improvement, the spokesperson said.

Though 21% were concerned about airport safety and hygiene checks in phase 1, it declined considerably to 6% in phase 5. “In the first phase, 71% of respondents considered air travel as the safest mode of transport. This went up to 89% in the final phase.”

Fear of Covid-19 infection was the principal reason for people to avoid flights. “Family not comfortable” was the next most cited reason, across demographics. However, the survey highlighted that with the passage of time people began to get more comfortable with airport safety measures.

Acceptance of contactless processing improved from 62% to 100%, while comfort with using the Arogya Setu e-pass improved from 49% to 86%. Among the frequent flyers, comfort levels with most safety measures were the highest compared to other segments.

A total of 6,098 respondents participated in the survey. They were chosen from a database of over 150,000 passengers from across age, profession, frequency of flying and sector of flying.