Airfares zoom for Diwali, from Mumbai to North States

Travelling by air during this Diwali is likely to be an expensive affair.  Airfares on key routes across the country for the festival week — between November 10 and November 16 — is set to be heavy on pockets. According to a TOI report, the cheapest Diwali travel return fares from Mumbai to other cities such as Prayagraj, Patna, Lucknow, Gaya, Darbhanga and Agra have crossed Rs 30,000. On the other hand, Diwali return fares to destinations such as Goa, Thiruvananthapuram, Chennai and Hyderabad are still under Rs 10,000 even as the festival is barely 10 days away.

Among the top two cities with stratospherically high domestic fares out of Mumbai are Ranchi and Raipur with the cheapest return fares of Rs 40,000 in the second half of October.The prime reason is demand-supply as airlines operate far fewer flights from Mumbai to northern destinations than to cities in the south. Early on, it was evident that Diwali fares on these routes to the north would climb high. For instance, on September 1, the cheapest available return fare for Diwali travel on non-stop flights from Mumbai to Patna was priced at Rs 35,000, though currently it has reduced to Rs 33,000.Diwali fares from Mumbai to Chennai, Kolkata, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Visakhapatnam, Guwahati, Nagpur, Ahmedabad, Vadodara, Indore, Kochi and Goa were pricier in October than now, in November.

Gaurav Patwari, VP - air category, Cleartrip, said the top three metro to non-metro domestic flight routes during Diwali in terms of bookings are Delhi to Lucknow, Mumbai to Patna, and Chennai to Kolkata. "Domestic bookings for Diwali travel this year have increased by approximately 28.4% compared to last year (15 days before Diwali)," he said, adding that the demand for air travel from Mumbai during Diwali this year is about 16.6% higher than last year.