Airfares in November declined in the range of 3-13% on the most travelled domestic routes, data sourced from travel agencies showed, reports Malyaban Ghosh in New Delhi. Though November is generally a dull season for air travel as it follows the festival season, analysts said this time the decline has been sharper. The reason may be twofold — demonetisation, which in turn saw lower bookings as travellers postponed holiday plans, and two, with increase in capacities by all the carriers, lower tariffs were a means to attract passengers to maintain their passenger load factor.
According to data provided by ticket and hotel booking portal MakeMyTrip, average fares on the Delhi-Mumbai route, the busiest sector, dropped by 3.9%, while the same on the Delhi-Bangalore route dipped by 13.20% compared with the same month last year.
Alok Bajpai, founder of travel portal Ixigo, said that there has been a drop in bookings of air tickets in the range of 10-15% during the month after demonetisation was announced.
“We saw booking of air tickets decrease by 10-15% since demonetisation but there has been a slight recovery in the last one week. For certain players the decrease was also 20%. Some of the small traders and businessman who use to travel frequently have put their travel plans on hold,” Bajpai said.