Airfares from Mumbai soar for next 2 long weekends

MUMBAI: The month of April with its generous list of public holidays has seen domestic airfares shoot up for travel during the coming two long weekends. The cheapest to-and-fro fare for the April 7 to 9 Easter weekend for Mumbai-Srinagar, for instance, was Rs 52,000, Dehradun Rs 34,000 and Kochi Rs 13,000 on Thursday. For the next long weekend of April 14 to 16, the fares are "cheaper" for Mumbai-Srinagar at Rs 31,800 and Dehradun at Rs 14,600 while Kochi is unchanged at Rs 13,000.
After the pandemic, domestic passenger traffic breached the 4 lakh flyers per day mark for the first time during the long mid-April weekend last year. This April, too, flyers are expected to throng airports during the upcoming long weekends.
Rs 32,500: Easter weekend’s Goa return fare at ‘convenient time’
While April will again see a sea of domestic flyers converge at airports, what is different this time is that airfares are comparatively pricier than for the same time last year, indicating higher demand. But the broader trends remain the same. Cheapest fares on offer are those on metro-to-metro routes; the cheapest fares from metros to popular leisure destinations are those for flights that depart late at night or in the small hours of the morning. Fares on flights with convenient timings cost almost double than the cheapest fare on offer, and from metros such as Mumbai and Delhi, the most expensive flights continue to be for destinations such as Srinagar, Leh, Kochi, Dehradun, Mangaluru and Tirupati, among others.

Also, the Covid booking trend in 2020, 2021 and early 2022, of passengers booking air tickets only a few days before travel, has firmly been relegated to the past. Goa, the most popular short holiday destination, is expectedly in high demand. For travel from Mumbai during the Easter weekend, the cheapest return fare on Thursday started at Rs 10,000. But it was for a flight that landed in Goa at 11.30pm while the return flight departed at 12.15am—a fare that wouldn’t work as cheap for those relying on hotels.
On flights with convenient timings, departure from Mumbai at 11.25am and return departure at 1.15pm, the fare was Rs 32,500. For Ambedkar Jayanti weekend (April 14-16), fares for convenient flights are currently priced at Rs 17,500. “The Good Friday long weekend saw a 167% increase in booking demand compared to last year,” said an OYO spokesperson. Indiver Rastogi, president, Thomas Cook (India) and SOTC Travel, said they had witnessed a three-fold rise in travel demand for the consecutive extended weekends in April (including Mahavir Jayanti, Good Friday, Ambedkar Jayanti and Eid al-Fitr).
Compared to March, airfares on popular routes—from hubs like Mumbai, Delhi and Bengaluru to Chandigarh, Srinagar, Dehradun, Kochi, Goa and Port Blair—have witnessed a 20-60% surge during the long weekends of April, indicative of an appetite for holiday traffic and migrant working population travelling home for breaks, he said. Rajesh Magow of MakeMyTrip said the top 10 most booked destinations remain consistent, led by Goa. “In domestic packages, we have seen a 54% increase in average room nights booked this year over the corresponding period in 2019,” Magow added. Aloke Bajpai of ixigo said airfares are higher than pre-Covid levels. “Despite February and March being weak months for travel, we have seen an unprecedented demand.”