With hundreds of passengers cancelling their travel plans owing to COVID-19, the airfares for domestic travel have nosedived across metro cities in the country.
Now, a flight to Bengaluru will cost a passenger only ₹1,000.
Similarly, the fare to Delhi is now around ₹3,000-₹3,500 and to Hyderabad around ₹1,200-₹1,500.
Cautious flyers
Many flyers say they have stopped travelling for work to other metro cities, as the companies have decided to be cautious. Srinivasan V., a frequent flyer, said, “Usually, I keep travelling to Mumbai or Delhi for work, but now, my company has told me not to travel. They don’t want us taking any risk right now. We are having conference calls to get work done for now. Safety is more important than anything else right now.”
Vaidyanathan and his wife had planned to travel from Kerala to Chennai late this month, but they decided to cancel their trip last week. “We were quite eager to visit Chennai but with so much going on across the country, we didn’t think it was wise to travel now. We will be travelling with many other people in the aircraft and we won’t even know if anyone has an infection. We can always come back much later when things get better,” he said.
Sources said the flight occupancy has been rather poor in recent times and they don’t expect it to change for quite some time. “Even peak hour fares are affordable now, because there is not much demand at all,” a source said.
According to officials of Airports Authority of India (AAI), there many flight cancellations as well on several days.
“Because there are barely any passengers, an airline decides to cancel a flight and claims it did so for some operational reasons. There are also flight cancellations to many destinations on a daily basis. Many are scared to travel now, unless it is extremely important,” an official said.
