By Kavita Mistry 
Flight fares to different parts of the country and within the state skyrocketed on Friday, as the airlines decided to cash in on the surge in demand for tickets ahead of Diwali.
The flight fares to major metro cities, including New Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, and Hyderabad, saw a fourfold increase. Tickets were sold for as much as 30,000 to Delhi, against the regular fare of 7,000. Flight fares to Mumbai soared to 20,000, while the regular fare would be around 4,000.
The tickets to Kolkata cost 22,000, while destinations such as Guwahati also saw a surge in ticket fares up to 21,000. Union civil aviation minister Ram Mohan Naidu had instructed airlines not to hike ticket fares to unreasonably high amounts during festivals. He directed the tariff monitoring unit of the directorate general of civil aviation (DGCA) to maintain a strict watch on airfares and requested passengers to register complaints on high airfares on AirSewa, the ministry’s passenger grievance redress portal. Apart from metros, fares have been hiked manifold to intra-state destinations such as Trichy, Coimbatore, Madurai, and Salem.
The Indian Air Passengers’ Association has denounced the practice as unfair and unjust. “There should be a cap on airfares during festival seasons to keep flight journeys accessible to all people,” said the association president Sankar.
