By Kavita Mistry 
Airfares to Kolkata from metros, including Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, and Chennai nearly doubled in the run-up to Durga Puja, as thousands prepare to return home for the festival.
On Panchami, the cheapest one-way tickets showed steep hikes — INR 11,500 from Mumbai, INR 10,000 from Delhi, INR 11,000 from Chennai, INR 11,500 from Ahmedabad, and INR 11,700 from Bengaluru — even as return fares from Kolkata on the same dates remained comparatively moderate.
Soumya Mukherjee, a software engineer at a tech firm in Bengaluru, said he managed to secure leave for Durga Puja at the last moment but dropped travel plans because of the steep fares. “Round-trip ticket price for three of us is coming to over INR 72,000. So we decided to skip Kolkata this year. I’ve already started looking at tickets for Diwali and Bhaiphonta,” said Mukherjee, a Behala resident.
Others like Rusha Banerjee, who works at a private firm in Delhi, said she and her husband have been driving back home to avoid paying the INR 40,000 two-way airfare for the two. Travel platforms and airlines say the spike is driven by compressed supply and a surge in short-window bookings. IndiGo, Air India, and others have added extra frequencies and larger aircraft into Kolkata to meet demand, but seat increases have been unable to fully blunt the price rise on peak travel days.
“Airfares on several busy routes have shot up to nearly double the usual rates, with hikes ranging from 40% to 80% on many sectors,” said Anil Punjabi, national committee member, Travel Agents Federation of India (TAFI), East. Rail and bus options are also heavily booked for the same dates, pushing more travellers toward air travel.
Many from the city are also using this puja break to head out for short-haul holiday trips despite a steep surge in ticket price. While North Bengal leads the race, travellers are also headed to Jaipur–Udaipur–Jaisalmer, followed by Himachal, Uttarakhand, Goa, and Kerala. Outside India,UAE leads the festive pack with Dubai and Abu Dhabi seeing record demand, followed by Thailand, Singapore, Vietnam, Bali, and Hong Kong. “Short-haul hubs are winning on time and convenience, while offbeat India is quietly rising as a crowd-free alternative,” said Abhishek Daga, co-founder of Thrillophilia.
