Last-minute airfares from Delhi surges up to 60% as Jet Airways, IndiGo cancel flights

Flying in and out of the Delhi airport to key cities such as Chennai, Mumbai and Kolkata is going to cost anywhere up to 60 per cent more than regular fares as domestic carriers have cancelled up to 150 flights on a daily basis.

Debt-ridden Jet Airways is cancelling about 100 flights per day in wake of rising cost and non-payment of amounts outstanding to lessors under their respective lease agreements, according to a Economic Times report.

As per the business daily, IndiGo, country's largest carrier, is cancelling up to 50 flights daily as it faces shortage of pilots. The move comes amid several senior expat pilots quitting their jobs at IndiGo in the last few months, impelling it to scout for new ones to fill in the vacant posts.

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Last-minute airfares from the Delhi airport to key domestic destinations such as Mumbai have spiked up to Rs 12,130 while cheapest last-minute fares were available at Rs 9,753. Airfares to and from Mumbai have also been risen as both its runways remained closed for maintenance for six hours every alternate day beginning February 7 till March 30, as per report.

"The overall fare table in the domestic market has increased significantly over the past few weeks with last-minute fares on key routes being the most impacted," the ET quoted Sharat Dhall, chief operating officer, B2C, at Yatra.com as saying. "This increase in the yields has been driven by the reduction in capacity for various reasons by some of the large carriers," he said.

The two airport runways at the Mumbai airport will be closed from 11 am to 5 pm for three days -- Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays -- every week till March 30. This will significantly reduce the total flight capacity at the Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport (CSIA).

On February 12, IndiGo had said that it was going to cancel approximately 30 flights every day until March end owing to its flight schedule adjustments and the time it needed to stabilize its network and operations. IndiGo operates about 1,300 flights daily.

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Edited by Chitranjan Kumar