As flight operations remain severely limited in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, air travel is becoming dearer.
Currently, Chennai airport is handling only 40-50 flights a day. A ticket for a flight from Chennai to Delhi costs around ₹5,000.
But since services are limited, if a passenger finds the timings of a particular flight inconvenient, he/she will have to book another flight, which may cost as much as ₹8,000. On days when direct flights to Mumbai are not available, those with one or two stopovers tend to be quite costly, passengers say.
D. Sudhakara Reddy, of the Air Passengers’ Association of India, said that currently, many of the domestic flyers are those who had been stranded in various cities as a result of the lockdown, and had been yearning to return to their home towns. Hence, they are eager to pay whatever the airlines demand of them to get back home.
“Earlier, the middle class could at least fly domestic. But now, they will think twice before booking a ticket. How many can afford to pay such fares,” he asked.
Officials of the Airports Authority of India (AAI) said when the number of flights goes up in the near future, the fares may come down. “But we may not see any drastic difference [in fares]. It also depends on the demand,” an official said.
Nearly two weeks after the resumption of domestic flight services, the number of people travelling through the Chennai airport remains very low — only 3,500 passengers a day, including arrivals and departures.