Why your festive season flights will cost more this year

New Delhi: Flying may cost you more this September quarter as festival weekends tempt more travellers, at a time airlines struggle to find enough aircraft to fly them. What's worse, fares may rise further in the December quarter, peak holiday season in India.

Fares for advance travel during the quarter have risen as much as 20% from last year, data from travel company Thomas Cook showed. Flights from Delhi to destinations such as Chandigarh and Bagdogra are up 10-20% from a year earlier, while from Mumbai, fares to Udaipur, Goa and Jaipur are up 10-13%. Fares from Bengaluru for Goa, Chandigarh, Leh and Srinagar are up by 5-11%.

Multiple public holidays have sparked demand for short trips to domestic destinations, said Indiver Rastogi, president & group head of global business travel at Thomas Cook (India) and SOTC Travel. This year, Independence Day, Janmashtami, Onam, Eid and Ganesh Chaturthi are near weekends, creating opportunities for extended travel plans. Besides higher travel sentiment, the slow pace of adding aircraft is also driving up fares.

Ratings agency ICRA estimates domestic passenger traffic in June at around 13.28 million, more than 6% from a year earlier, and nearly 10% above pre-covid levels; however, airline capacity deployment in June was up by just 7% on year and lower by 3% over May.

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Separately, one of the terminals of Delhi's international airport, the country’s largest and busiest, remains out of service. A section of the roof at its Terminal 1 collapsed on 28 June after heavy rain. The terminal is India's largest with a capacity of 40 million passengers per annum, and while airlines have managed to utilize Terminal 2 and 3 for the affected flights, a slight impact is visible on fares for some routes, an airline executive said on condition of anonymity.

Expensive routes

Data from online travel platform Cleartrip shows advance air fares for major tourist routes are up by an average of 6.2% for the September quarter. The increase is around 18% for the October-November period, with a 20% increase in bookings as well.

Traditionally, the December quarter is the strongest for travel due to the onset of festivals and holiday season.

Thomas Cook data showed that in the international category, new short-haul destinations with direct flights such as Almaty and Baku are seeing an increase of 20-33% in fares on flights from Delhi and Mumbai across the July-September period, while the usual foreign favourites such as Bangkok, Hong Kong, Singapore have actually seen a decline of 4-7% in air fares.

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“Being an election year, this has also contributed to an extended holiday period lasting till mid-August, and we continue to see strong demand for the next two months across Tier 1 & Tier 2 cities for our holiday business across domestic and international destinations,” Rastogi of Thomas Cook added.

The next quarter may see even higher fares.

At travel firm ixigo, advance air fares for routes such as Chennai-Kolkata are already up by over 70% and those for Delhi-Bengaluru are up by around 28% for the October-November period. “Due to the upcoming festive season, demand for popular metro routes is increasing by an average of 25-30%,” said Aloke Bajpai, chairman, managing director & group CEO, ixigo.