Festive rush! Airfares see a 20% uptick due to Diwali

Ahead of the upcoming Diwali weekend, airfares across major destinations have risen, especially on busy routes like Delhi-Mumbai.

These routes are witnessing a close to 20 per cent hike in airfares including the busiest Delhi-Mumbai sector, leading travel operators say. 

The festive rush is such that routes like Bengaluru-Delhi have seen a 30 per cent rise in the Diwali week. 

In contrast, a few sectors like Delhi-Patna and Kolkata-Mumbai, are seeing a close to 10 per cent decrease in airfares, says Nishant Pitti, CEO & Co-Founder of EaseMyTrip.

Online travel operators say that October 20 was one of the most searched dates in this quarter for routes across metro cities.

The surge in demand is expected to lead to a double-digital growth this Diwali for airline companies.

"While airfares across certain metro-to-metro routes have dropped in comparison to 2019 by 16-18 per cent, there is a significant rise of about 17-20 per cent in comparison to 2021. Unlike the metro cities, the airfares for non-metro to non-metro routes in 2022 have witnessed a notable increase of 26 per cent as compared to 2019 and 6-8 per cent in comparison to 2021," said Bharat Malik, Senior Vice President, Flights, Yatra.com. 

“Metro city routes such as Mumbai-Delhi witness a very high demand during the festive season of Diwali. We saw a 36 per cent year on year increase in airfares on this route. We are also seeing a 1.2x spike in bookings for Diwali travel from Tier 1 and Tier 2 cities," said Gaurav Patwari from Cleartrip to Business Today TV. 

Recently, data released by aviation regulator DGCA showed that domestic air passenger volume grew 46.54 per cent to 10.34 passengers in September on a year-on-year basis.

Domestic air passenger traffic has been improving, and in August, it stood at 10 1 million flyers. 

Indian carriers ferried over 7.66 million passengers on domestic routes last September. On October 9 this year, domestic air passenger traffic was over 400,000 passengers and inching closer to pre-COVID levels.

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