Airfares Skyrocket: Kolkata-Mumbai Rs 90,000

Mumbai, Dec 5 (PTI) Airfares reached levels never seen before on Friday, with a one-way one-stop economy-class SpiceJet Kolkata-Mumbai flight ticket for December 6 costing up to Rs 90,000, and a similar ticket of Air India for Mumbai-Bhubaneswar going up to Rs 84,485, according to the airlines' websites.

A similar trend was noted on many other high-traffic routes.

With IndiGo cancelling over 1,000 flights on Friday owing to crew shortage as the second phase of the pilots flight duty and rest period norms kicked in, huge capacity was out of the market, leading to airfares tripling and quadrupling from over the normal range, a travel industry executive said.

"The situation is such that you can't predict what are going to be the ticket prices when you book a flight. It may be two times, three times or even more than the normal fare range," he said.

IndiGo operates around 2,300 flights a day and has been cancelling flights in hundreds over the last four days as it struggled to secure adequate crew to operate its widespread and dense network.

"The last minute fares are generally 2-3 times of the normal average fares. But in this situation, we have seen them surging even six times," the source said.

"If a Rs 10,000 ticket is being sold at Rs 60,000, at any place, I would call it black marketing, profiteering. So there is a dire need to look at it," said Nomad Travel CEO and Travel Agents' Association of India former president, Ajay Prakash.

Slamming the surge in airfares, he said it appears that the business of civil aviation is aimed only at making money.

A market where one airline has 64-65 per cent of the market share is as good as a monopoly, Prakash said, advocating for capping of fares to prevent such high fares in times of crisis.

Delhi-based Stick Travel's Founder and Former President of Indian Association of Tour Operators (IATO) Subhash Goel said, "I have written to the civil aviation ministry that there should be capping on airfares like it was during the Covid-19 pandemic." he said.