by Pankaj Yadav
NEW DELHI, June 16 (Xinhua) -- Over the past couple of days, concerns have been raised over exorbitant domestic airfares in India, leading to the Civil Aviation Minister's intervention into the issue.
Observers said that one of the major reasons behind airfares on domestic routes going up has been the cancellation of tickets by one of the country's private airline companies over the past month citing "operational" reasons.
The crisis-hit airline company "Go First" has repeatedly announced the cancellation of flights for over a month now, leading to extra pressure on other airline companies, as the higher demand boosts higher prices.
On the other hand, the demand for air tickets also went high as it is summer vacation time in most parts of India. Schools and courts are shut as the Mercury touches nearly 50 Degrees Celsius in May and June, and people taking to domestic tourism leads to a rise in demand for air tickets.
While considering the rise in domestic airfares, a large number of Indians either canceled their air travel or rescheduled for alternative modes of travel.
A resident of Noida city, adjoining Delhi, Pavitra Rani, had planned to take a flight to the southern city of Hyderabad on June 12 to attend a wedding but had to cancel her visit owing to high airfares.
"In the past, we often used to get a Delhi-Hyderabad return ticket for 10,000-11,000 Indian Rupees, but this time it was nearly 25,000 Indian Rupees. I couldn't afford it, hence canceled my visit. I don't remember airfares being this high in my recent memory," she told Xinhua.
A federal lawmaker Binoy Viswam with the Communist Party of India recently wrote a letter to the country's Civil Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia, asking the minister to arrest the "indiscriminate increase" in domestic airfare prices across the country and the extreme hardship to the ordinary citizens.
The federal lawmaker who belongs to the southern state of Kerala, mentioned in his letter that airfares were higher by as much as 200-300 percent than normal on several routes from his home state.
The minister replied that A portion of the routes that were earlier being served by Go First have already been allotted to other airlines, adding that the passenger count which stood at 122 million in 2014 is currently at 280 million, a jump of 130 percent.
The Indian federal government in 2016 launched a UDAN (Hindi acronym for "Let the common citizens of the country fly") scheme to develop regional airports and upgrade under-serviced air routes.
Under the UDAN scheme, the minister said they have operationalized 475 routes and flown over 11.6 million passengers.
IndiGo, Air India, Spicejet, Vistara, and Go First are the among major airline companies in the country catering to domestic air travel needs.
On June 5, Scindia convened a meeting with the "Airlines Advisory Group" to discuss the issue of abnormal price surges on specific routes, airline companies were instructed to self-monitor airfares on select routes, particularly those previously serviced by crisis-hit airline Go First, which recently filed for insolvency that leads to flight cancellations.
"We have advised airlines to self-regulate their fares under a certain limit, the result of which is that prices have come down by 14-60 percent since June 6," said Scindia.
India's daily domestic air traffic had recently reached an "all-time high" at 456,000 passengers flying domestically on a single day and is expected to surpass the 500,000-passenger mark in a single day by this year-end, according to the data released by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) On Thursday.
"Passengers carried by domestic airlines during January-May 2023 were 63.6 million, compared to 46.73 million during the same period in 2022," the DGCA's data showed.
The minister said that India has the third largest domestic aviation market globally and the total number of domestic passengers in 2014 was 60 million, which doubled to 143 million in 2020 prior to COVID-19.
The number of international passengers has increased from 43 million to 64 million, he added. (1 U.S. dollar equals about 82 Indian Rupees) ■