Runways shut: Mumbai-delhi fares see new highs, fliers suffer

TILL MAR 30 Last-minute travellers hassled as fares for morning flights on shutdown days touch ₹29K; other routes hit

MUMBAI: The city airport’s sixhour shutdown, three days a week for repair of runways, has led to a steep rise in airfares on the Mumbai-delhi route – the busiest in the country.

The Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport (CSMIA), which handles an average of 950 operations daily, has taken 230 flights off the schedule on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays until March 30. Of these, 30 are on the Mumbai-delhi corridor which has 132 flights daily. Also, the scheduled flights have been squeezed into the morning and late-night schedules to avoid the 11am to 5pm shutdown period, resulting in fares for early morning flights, which are usually cheaper, touching ₹9,500.

Usually, flights between the cities can cost upwards from ₹3,000, depending on the time of booking, the flight time and the airline.

For a Saturday flight to Delhi, booked on Wednesday, an Indigo flight 6E 3162 at 6.05am was available for ₹22,000, an 8.15am Air India flight for ₹14,770, a Goair G8 327 at 7.55am

for ₹15,502, a Jet Airways 9W 301 at 6.45am for ₹15,968 and a Vistara UK 994 of 10.25am for ₹29,524. The cheapest flights for the day were the 9.15pm and 11.30pm operations of Goair G8 643, which were available for

around ₹9,000. “The repairs have led to a substantial spike of 25-30% [in fares] in the Delhimumbai sector. Last-minute non-stop flights and stopover flights have been impacted the most, recording a growth of over

200% in some cases,” said Aloke Bajpai, CEO, co-founder, ixigo.

While trips planned in advance are not affected, those booking tickets at short notice are badly hit. The shutdown has affected other routes too. Airport officials said that 14 of the 70 daily flights between Mumbai and Bangalore, another major air corridor, have been cancelled till March-end. Morning flights between Mumbai and Bangalore for Saturday had fares starting from ₹14,000 going up to ₹26,000. However, evening flights were available in the ₹7,000-10,000 range. On regular days, when booking is done two days prior to the date of travel, a morning flight for Bangalore is available for around ₹6,000.

Several Mumbai-goa flights, too, have taken off the schedule on the shutdown days. Tickets for Goa on Saturday were available at rates between ₹10,000 and ₹16,000 if bookings are done three days in advance, two to three times the normal fare. “We have seen an average increase of 31% in train searches on the Delhimumbai route over the past two weeks,” said Bajpai of ixigo.

The last major repair work on the runways was done in 2011-12. Jitender Bhargava, former executive director of Air India, said, “The operator has selected a good time slot and period in the year to finish the work as February and March months are usually associated with exams in India.”