Domestic flights saw a massive fare drop ahead of Diwali, bringing much-needed relief to Air passengers. According to a report from travel portal ixigo, average airfares on many domestic routes have dropped 20–25 percent compared to the year-ago period.
Ixigo did an analysis on that. On many domestic routes, average airfares fell by 20–25 percent compared to the corresponding period of last year during the festival season. A report by ixigo showed that the average airfare for domestic routes is on a declining trend a big relief to air passengers ahead of Diwali and Chhath Puja.
The increase in capacity combined with the recent oil price fall are considered to be some of the reasons behind the lower air ticket prices. The prices are for one-way average fare on a 30-day APD (advanced purchase date) basis.
For this year, the period taken into account is October 28-November 3, while for 2023, it stands at November 10-16. As estimated by the analysis, the maximum decrease of average airfare is 38 percent in a Bengaluru-Kolkata flight to Rs 6,319 this year as against Rs 10,195 last year.
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The ticket price on the Chennai-Kolkata route has crashed by 36 percent to Rs 5,604 from Rs 8,725. While the average airfare for a Mumbai-Delhi flight has crashed 34 percent to Rs 5,762 from Rs 8,788, there is a 34 percent decline on the Delhi-Udaipur route to Rs 7,469 from Rs 11,296. Decline on Delhi-Kolkata, Hyderabad-Delhi, and Delhi-Srinagar routes stands at 32 percent.
“Last year around Diwali, there was limited capacity and airfares were up, mainly on account of the closure of Go First airline. But this time, we see some comfort as there has been a booking of additional capacity since then, and thus, average airfares for the last week of October are down by about 20-25% YoY across key routes,” says Aloke Bajpai, Group CEO, ixigo.
He assigns a part of this trend to a decrease in oil prices, which this year have registered a fall of 15 percent, thus making the festive period even more affordable to classes that travel. Today, as geopolitical tensions are rising, oil prices are just slightly on the uptrend.
Meanwhile, airfares have risen by 34 percent on certain routes. On the Ahmedabad-Delhi route, the ticket price has risen 34 percent to Rs 8,758 from Rs 6,533. In the Mumbai-Dehradun route, the hike is 33 percent to Rs 15,527 from Rs 11,710, the analysis showed.
