Airfares soar sky high driven by higher demand, rising fuel prices

• Follow

Airfares on key international flights connecting India rise amid high demand

New Delhi: Driven by high demand, airfares of international flights on key routes connecting India have notably increased during the past month, data from EaseMyTrip.com showed.

Average economy class fare on a flight heading from Delhi to Newark in the US increased from Rs 69,034 in July to Rs 87,542 in August, as per the data from the travel portal. Fares for a Mumbai-Moscow flight nearly doubled to Rs 85,024 in August from Rs 43,132 in July. For Mumbai-Doha flight the airfare jumped to Rs 18,384 from Rs 11,719 in the previous month.

Recently, a large number of countries have eased their travel restrictions for Indian citizens, and consequently the demand for travel has increased. Further, rising fuel prices have also triggered the surge in airfares.

Passengers have been complaining on social media about the rise in fares of India-UK flights during the last couple of weeks.

Passengers have taken on social media to complain about the exorbitant fares, particularly India-UK flights.

Sanjeev Gupta, Secretary, Inter-State Council Secretariat, Union Home Ministry, said on Twitter on Saturday that an economy-class ticket on British Airways’s Delhi-London flight for August 26 was priced Rs 3.95 lakh.

The APIs from Airlines being consumed by Travel Portals have issues in some cases. If economy class is not available, it automatically fetches business fare but shows economy only on travel portal. The basic point still remains ~1.2 lakh for 1 way direct flight is still too high. https://t.co/N7GGX6PnEx pic.twitter.com/ukFe5E7HN3

— Sanjeev Gupta (@sanjg2k1) August 7, 2021

Gupta added that economy-class ticket on Delhi-London flights of Vistara and Air India for August 26 was also priced between Rs 1.2 lakh and Rs 2.3 lakh amid the college admission time in the UK.

International flights were suspended in India since March 23 last year amid the coronavirus pandemic. However, since July 2020, limited special international passenger flights have been operating.

The average economy-class ticket on a flight operating on Bengaluru-Male-Bengaluru route increased from Rs 18,741 in July to Rs 20,372 in August, as per EaseMyTrip.com.