Hindustan Times ST (Mumbai) - Live
Spot airfares fall up to 50% in Jan
NEW DELHI: After a blockbuster December for airlines, with high fares and strong demand, January has seen as much as a 40% drop in spot fares on several metro routes, indicating demand has softened, data from multiple travel websites showed.
Spot fares for a MumbaiDelhi flight have declined to ₹6,000-27,000 from ₹14,000-27,000 in December. Spot fares for Mumbai-Bengaluru currently cost ₹4,000-6,000 from ₹4,000-14,000 in December. Similarly, fares for Delhi-Kolkata are down to ₹8,000-18,000 from ₹15,000-22,000 in December, data from travel portals showed.
“Average spot fares in January have decreased by 15-20%, month-on-month, due to a decrease in demand as compared to the peak travel season of December. The drop in airfares can also be due to the recent travel sales being rolled out by airlines in January. December saw significant travel demand on account of Christmas and New Year vacations, which also drove airfares higher,” said Aloke Bajpai, group CEO and co-founder of Ixigo.
India’s aviation market saw the strongest demand since the onset of covid in December, with monthly air passenger traffic at 12.7 million passengers, marginally lower than the level of 13 million passengers in the pre-covid period of December 2019.
India also saw a record number of air travellers on 24 December, as 435,500 people took to the skies on 2,904 flights.
This was also higher than the daily average of 2,900 flight departures and 400,000 air passengers in the pre-covid year of 2019.
According to Yatra.com and Cleartrip, airfares in January are down by at least 14% compared to December. However, travel websites also saw a rise in demand during the upcoming week. Spot fares for December were 30% higher than the spot fares seen in January so far, Cleartrip said, adding that this could change for the spot bookings for the upcoming long weekend.
“We are noticing an uptick in fares by 10-15% during the Republic Day weekend,” said Bharatt Malik, business head for flights at Yatra Online Ltd.
Similarly, EaseMyTrip has seen a surge of about 20% in airfares for flights during the Republic Day weekend from the regular days of the month. There has been a surge in queries for travel to Goa, Dubai, New Delhi, Mumbai and Bangkok, according to travel website Kayak.
“Domestic flight searches around Republic Day are up 185% compared to the same period pre-pandemic. Our data also show an increase of around 24% for international flight searches,” said Kayak India manager of Tarun Tahiliani.