NEW DELHI: Last month saw almost 1.3 crore passengers flew within in the country, 7.3% more than July 2023, DGCA data showed. The first seven months of this calendar year have seen 9.2 crore domestic flyers, 4.7% more than Jan-July 2023’s 8.8 crore — in spite of higher airfares.
Travel industry insiders say domestic airfares are 10-25% higher for the coming festive season.“This is the lean travel quarter and airlines have come out with sales. But, these sales mostly offer lower fares on flights that do not see much demand,” said Anil Kalsi, VP, Travel Agents Federation of India.

To be sure, India continues to have a very high-cost operating environment for airlines especially due to jet fuel prices. A weaker rupee adds to the equation as significant part of airlines’ costs are dollar-denominated like lease rentals. With two mega airlines, India’s aviation landscape has changed from earlier fight for market share by offering low (often below cost) airfares — that eventually led to collapse of big airlines like Kingfisher and Jet (GoAir was a different story) — to now what airlines call “pricing discipline” of not repeating that mistake.
India now has two well-funded mega airlines — Tata-backed Air India-led group and IndiGo — that between them have 91% of domestic market share.