Air travel demand rises in festive season, hike in airfares
Passengers who haven't purchased airline tickets for October-November travel might avoid paying excessive costs by returning on a weekday.
Demand for travel during the holiday season has raised up the cost of non-stop flights on some domestic routes. Fares from Mumbai to cities like Dehradun, Srinagar, Jaipur, Kolkata, Lucknow, and Kochi reflect hike. Except for Male, where prices are now cheaper than those to some domestic locations, airfares to overseas places open to Indians are also very high.
The return tickets are more expensive, especially if the return flight is on a Sunday or weekend. Passengers who haven’t purchased airline tickets for October-November travel might avoid paying excessive costs by returning on a weekday and saving 20-30%. For example, the cheapest return cost on Mumbai-Dehradun non-stop flights around the end of October and return on November 7, a Sunday, started at Rs 35,000 on Saturday. On Monday, November 8, it was Rs 29,300.
“With the onset of the festive season, we’ve witnessed an upward trend and 40-50 percent increase in booking queries for hotels and flights,” a yatra.com spokeswoman stated.
“We’ve noticed that airfares can go up around 70% at the last minute and throughout the week before Diwali,” said Rikant Pittie, co-founder of EaseMyTripAround. Previously, we saw a nearly 65% increase in air reservations for Ganesh Chaturthi’s long weekend and a 54% increase in air bookings for Janmashtami’s long weekend. It reflects a growing tendency of people travelling over the holiday season. As a result, we are hopeful that travel bookings will increase throughout the holiday season.”
Not only are foreign fares costly, but non-stop flights have also few seats available. “India should enable airlines to gradually build capacity on international routes by at least 15% to 25% each month till they reach pre-Covid capacity,” he said.