A last-minute decision to fly over to your hometown to surprise your family this festive season might leave your purse feeling a lot lighter. As the country bounces back after two years of heavy travel restrictions, the zeal of domestic flyers is literally pushing fares through the sky. The upcoming long Diwali weekend has led to a surge in demand for plane tickets, and prices follow the upward graph. A direct flight from Mumbai to Delhi, just before the festival, is selling for as high as Rs 37,000– if the seats are not completely sold out, that is. Even the lowest priced tickets are going at 14,000-15,000 in this period.
Speaking to BQ Prime, the co-founder and group chief executive of Ixigo, Aloke Bajpai said that the average airfares have gone up by 20-30 percent this year on favoured metro routes. “Last-minute airfares on metro to non-metro routes like New Delhi to Lucknow and Mumbai to Darbhanga, which have fewer flight frequencies, have seen a substantial rise of almost 40-45 percent,” the executive further stated.
Also Read: Airfare, Train Ticket Prices Soar Ahead of Festive Season; Know More
The October-December quarter is usually the most revenue-generating one for airlines, courtesy of the festive season followed by the wedding season. However, this year, the spike is higher than usual. Data from travel platforms shows that most one-way ticket fares on popular metro-to-metro routes have more than doubled as compared with the festival season in the pre-pandemic year 2019. The exceptional increase points towards people’s urge to travel after two long years of suppressing their wanderlust. The price rise is also largely unrestrained since the government lifted COVID-19-induced caps last month.
The rising fares have also produced some peculiar trends. For instance, the revenue management teams of full-service carriers are noticing some flights where the prices of economy class tickets have exceeded those of business class or premium economy tickets, The Indian Express reported.
Some outbound flights from the country have cheaper rates than domestic flights. Travelling to foreign countries like Dubai or Thailand in certain time slots of the flights costs about half the amount compared to metro-to-metro travel during the same period.
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