With the July-September period seen as a lean season for travel, airlines’ are wooing travellers with discounted ticket sales. While such sales started earlier this month by some carriers, Tata Group’s Air India joined the bandwagon on Thursday by launching a special, 96-hour sale across its domestic and international route network. Similarly, SpiceJet, which started its discount sales from Monday, which is open till August 20.
Industry executives as well as travel firms indicated that more such discounted sales will come in the days to come. The development comes after record high air fares during the month of May which led the civil aviation minister, Jyotiraditya Scindia counsel the airlines to check soaring fares.
Domestic carriers carried 12.1 million passengers in July, according to the Directorate General of Civil Aviation data. This is down 3.1% compared to June when they carried 12.4 million passengers. The June numbers were also 5.5% lower than 13.2 million passengers carried in May.
“July-September period is traditionally a lean season for domestic carriers as it comes just after the summer holidays are over. Travel during this period is predominantly done by the corporates,” Jagannarayan Padmanabhan, Director, Crisil market intelligence and analytics said.
As per Air India’s offer, on domestic routes, the one-way, all-inclusive fares start from Rs 1,470 for Economy, and Rs 10,130 for Business Class. Similar attractive fares are available for select international routes also.
The bookings under the sale are open from Thursday till Sunday, August 20, for travel between September 1 and October 31, 2023 on select domestic and international routes.
In the case of SpiceJet, the travel period is from August 15, till March 30, 2024. The airline is offering one-way fares starting for as low as Rs 1,515 (all-inclusive) on popular domestic routes such as Mumbai-Goa, Jammu-Srinagar, Goa-Mumbai, Guwahati-Bagdogra, Chennai–Hyderabad amongst others.
Just a few days back, IndiGo was offering up to 25% discount on the base fare for select domestic and international flights. The limited-time promotion was for travel between August 15, 2023, to June 15, 2024.
Akasa Air was recently offering travellers up to 15% discount on flight tickets across 16 domestic destinations on the airline’s network via an anniversary special offers which was valid till August 7.
“While the present demand might show a slight dip compared to previous months, there’s a 10-15% surge when measured against the same period last year,” Sabina Chopra, COO-Corporate Travel and Head- Industry Relations, Yatra.com said.