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Airfare hike in India: ‘Domestic travel gets costlier’

Satyaki Dutta

If you are planning to travel within India, be prepared to shell out more money. With the new directive of the Civil Aviation Ministry, domestic air travel is going to be costlier like anincrease up to 30 percent in India now, till March, which may persist for a bit longer too.

The Central Government imposed a lockdown resulting in the suspension of all scheduled commercial passenger flights on March 25, 2020, in the country. Domestic flights resumed their operations from May 25, 2020.  At this time, the central government had imposed a fixed cap for airline ticket price during the pinnacle of the covid-19 pandemic. 

Indian airlines have been demanding for long to lift their restriction in setting fares. Ronojoy Dutta, CEO of IndiGo, stated, “Fares are lower than they should be at this point of time and again it is because we are not getting enough of our booking period,”.

The government now has also issued a new and updated fare band with the increase in fare for domestic travel from minimum Rs 2000 and maximum Rs 6000 to Rs 2200 and Rs 7800 respectively. In the highest fare band, the minimum and maximum fares have been moved from Rs 6,500 and Rs 18,600 to Rs 7,200 and Rs 24,200. 

The civil aviation minister, Hardeep Singh Puri informed the Rajya Sabha that the price bands on domestic flights would be discontinued as soon as flight services reach levels that were before the pandemic started.

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