From next Sunday, India will be fully open for international flights from around the world but travellers will have to wait for some more time before more flight options become available and airfares drop as airlines take a slow and staggered approach to mounting capacity.
International destinations such as Italy, Spain and Austria that didn't have flights from India in the past two years are now some of the options available to holiday makers. But a search on travel portals for a flight in June doesn't show direct flights yet for these countries. Travellers can however book one-stop flights via Istanbul, Abu Dhabi and Helsinki or Frankfurt in the case of Austria.
Another example is Turkey, which is connected from India by its flag carrier Turkish Airlines and Indian airline IndiGo. But the latter is yet to start selling tickets for the route.
With fewer airlines flying on these routes, airfares are 25%-50% higher than pre-COVID levels.
"Fare correction has not yet happened on international routes right now as airlines have been hesitant to start new services until they get a better sense of the demand and also due to the oil situation. Hopefully, once the Russia- Ukraine tension eases and oil prices come down, airfares will come down and capacity will get added more aggressively by airlines," said Aloke Bajpai, Group CEO and co-founder, ixigo.
"Market demand, aircraft availability and crew resources will continue to be key considerations before we start opening routes that were shut, or start adding capacity to those routes we were serving under air-bubble agreements," said a senior executive at a leading Indian airline.
IndiGo has said that it will be taking a phased approach to re-opening international flights, and destinations like Turkey, Vietnam and Malaysia will be served in the second phase.
International airlines have said that it will take them 4-6 weeks to redeploy their planes to India.
On March 8, India announced full resumption of international flights from March 27. Before that, airlines could operate a limited number of direct flights to and from 37 countries under the air-bubble agreement.
Passengers from India planning to travel to Europe could face another challenge. "Several countries in Europe such as Switzerland and Italy require passengers to have received their second dose of vaccination at most 270 days before their date of travel. Which means you will have to take a booster dose to travel if you received your last dose more than nine months back," said Daniel D'souza, President and Country Head, Leisure at SOTC Travel.
But demand for international air travel has risen. Destinations such as Dubai, Male, New York, London, Melbourne and Bangkok have seen a 100% growth in search queries for travel in March and April 2022 compared with the same time last year, according to data from ixigo.
People are also basing the decision to travel depending on the time taken to get a visa. "U.K. used to take 50-55 days, which they are trying to bring down to 30 days. Schengen Visa for countries like France, Switzerland and Spain takes 5-7 days. This is also the reason why there is traction for Australia since visa for destinations like U.S. is now taking upto 6-7 months," added Mr. D'Souza.
Visa services provider VFS Global says that in anticipation of travel opening from March 27, it has started operations in tier-2 cities and travellers can avail of new offerings started during the pandemic such as “visa at your doorstep”, digital submissions as well as digital verification of documents before visiting a visa centre.
