Air Travel To Cost More As Govt Increases Air Fare Capping For Fourth Time This Year

It may be noted that this is for the second time in around two months that the aviation ministry has decided to raise airfares.

The Civil Aviation Ministry stated this in an official order that was released on Thursday. According to the new order, the lower limit for flights under 40 minutes of flight-time was increased by from R 2,600 to Rs 2,900 which comes to around 11.53%.

Meanwhile, the upper cap for flights under 40 minutes of the duration was also increased by 12.82% which is Rs 8,800.

Red order further read, "Flights with a duration between 40-60 minutes will now have a lower limit of Rs 3,700, up from Rs 3,300 while the upper cap on these flights has gone up by 12.24% which is Rs 11,000 from Friday."

"Flights between 60-90 minutes will have a lower limit of ₹ 4,500 - an increase of 12.5 percent. The upper cap on these flights was increased by 12.82 percent to ₹ 13,200," the order further added.

On a similar note, hikes on airfares have also been brought into effect on air travels between 90-120, 120-150, 150-180, and 180-210 minutes.

However, the actual prices for the air tickets will be considerably higher than the official government caps since these prices are excluded from passenger security fee, user development fee for the airports, and the GST.

It may be mentioned that, this recent hike during the month of August is the fourth hike in airfare caps in 2021 so far.

As per the government, the lower caps were imposed in order to help ease the financial crunch for the airline companies that were severely hit after the coronavirus pandemic.

The government order also clarified that it has not imposed hiked upper caps so that passengers are not unnecessarily charged extravagant airfares when there is a high demand for seats.