Mumbai Airfares to North India Skyrocket Ahead of Diwali Festivities, BA

With the Navi Mumbai airport expected to begin operations in the first half of next year, the coming Diwali festive week would be the last of its kind for Mumbai, where demand for air travel far outstrips supply. Airfares are predictably up, but on flights to destinations up north such as Ranchi, Raipur, Patna and Allahabad, they are too high for families to plan last-minute trips without burning a hole in their wallets.

It is cheaper to fly from Bengaluru, Chennai or Hyderabad to Patna than from Mumbai (all non-stop flights). On Wednesday, the cheapest return ticket to travel from Mumbai to Patna during the Diwali week was priced at INR 30,000. However, if you were to fly from Bengaluru or Chennai to Patna, the return fare is lower at INR 22,000, and from Hyderabad, it’s even lower at INR 18,000.

From Mumbai, the destinations with steep fares on non-stop flights are mostly those up north, such as Ranchi, Raipur, Bagdogra and Lucknow. By comparison, fares on flights from Mumbai to Dubai and Singapore are cheaper at INR 29,000 return.

While early booking was the best bet, people who haven’t booked their Diwali holidays yet could look at destinations that have remained comparatively cheaper out of Mumbai such as Goa ( INR 10,500 return fare), Chennai ( INR 10,700), Bengaluru (INR 8,000), and Hyderabad (INR 7,000).

The catch, though, is that seats on the best flights, those that depart and arrive at convenient times, are priced higher. Then again, the cancellation charge and the date change charge are lower for fares priced in the higher buckets.

Speaking about the trends observed last month during the Dussehra peak travel, a Cleartrip spokesperson said that there was a significant change in airfares in the domestic market. “What we saw for Dussehra travel was that Mumbai saw an 18.4 per cent increase, followed by Bhubaneswar and Lucknow with a 12.7 per cent and 12.3 per cent spike, respectively. Bengaluru saw an 11.8 per cent hike in airfares, and New Delhi saw an 11.7 per cent rise. Ahmedabad and Kolkata saw a price dip of 5.2 per cent and 1.8 per cent, respectively,” said a Cleartrip spokesperson. “About 85 per cent of domestic bookings were observed to be received within one month of travel, and around 4.6 per cent of bookings were made three months or more before the travel date,” the spokesperson added.

Rikant Pittie, co-founder of Easemytrip, said for the Diwali season this year, domestic fares out of Mumbai have seen a decrease of about 20-25 per cent compared with last year due to the recent reduction in fuel prices. “For Diwali 2024, the most popular advance booking period for domestic travel is 30 days, while for international travel, it has been around 60 days before the travel date,” he said.

The festive travel season falls right at the beginning of the airline winter schedule from Oct 27 to March 29. Airlines will operate 25,007 weekly flights in the winter schedule, which is a rise of 3 per cent from flights operated during the summer schedule this year, according to the Directorate General of Civil Aviation. For Mumbai airport, though, the number of flight operations per day has been capped at under 1,000 arrivals and departures to allow for punctuality.

Early this year, the civil aviation ministry looked at punctuality records of Indian airports and found that the infrastructure-constrained Mumbai airport—it operates out of a single runway, that is— has the worst on-time performance record.

The ministry curtailed flight operations to better the airport’s punctuality. Currently, Mumbai airport handles an average of 950 airline-scheduled flights and a dozen or two charter flights a day. Once the Navi Mumbai airport gets going and adds flights, both MMR airports together are estimated to handle average of 1,500 daily flights.