Domestic airfares are rising sharply ahead of India’s festive travel season, but the pressure is not being created by a simple shortage of seats. The more important shift is at the route level: airlines are scheduling fewer flights, using larger aircraft and concentrating capacity unevenly across the network. For passengers, that can mean higher prices and fewer practical departure choices even when total seat capacity remains broadly stable.
Data reviewed by Economic Times shows that average one-way fares between September 1 and November 10 have risen 68% year-on-year on the Delhi-Hyderabad route, 51% on Mumbai-Kolkata, 39% on Delhi-Goa and 37% on Mumbai-Bengaluru. Yatra has reported domestic fares 30-40% higher than last year and expects high-demand routes to become another 15-20% more expensive as departure dates approach, particularly where available capacity remains constrained.
The trend reveals an important feature of India’s aviation market: national capacity figures can conceal a very different passenger experience on individual corridors. Airlines may preserve the number of seats available in a quarter while reducing the number of services operating each day. That distinction matters to passengers who need to travel at specific times, connect through a particular airport or reach destinations during concentrated holiday peaks.
According to data from aviation analytics firm OAG, domestic flights scheduled for the October-December quarter are down 5% from a year earlier, while seat capacity is down only 1.2%. The gap indicates that airlines are operating fewer services with more seats per aircraft. In practice, this reflects the use of larger aircraft and a network strategy that protects aggregate capacity without necessarily preserving frequency.
The busiest day for domestic capacity this quarter is expected to be December 7, with 589,386 seats scheduled. That is below the 603,634 seats recorded on last year’s busiest day, according to John Grant, chief analyst at OAG. The figures suggest that the market is not facing a uniform collapse in supply. Instead, airlines are adjusting schedules in ways that produce very different outcomes from one city pair to another.
OAG’s route-level figures make that divergence clear. Capacity between Mumbai and Jamnagar has more than tripled to 102,520 seats from 32,452 a year earlier. Capacity between Delhi and Navi Mumbai has risen to 142,600 from 8,158 as the new airport increases its operations. At the same time, capacity on Ahmedabad-Kolkata is down 20.9%, while Hyderabad-Jaipur capacity has fallen 33.1%.
These shifts are significant because air travel demand is not evenly distributed across the year or across routes. Festive travel creates concentrated peaks, with passengers often travelling on similar dates and preferring direct services at convenient times. If an airline replaces several smaller services with fewer larger aircraft, the total number of seats may remain close to last year’s level, but the number of available departure windows falls. That can reduce flexibility and increase the price of the remaining seats as the travel date approaches.
The pattern also shows why airport and airline capacity should not be assessed only through annual passenger totals. A route can have adequate seats in aggregate and still offer poor connectivity for passengers whose schedules do not match the remaining flights. In a geographically large country, frequency is itself a form of transport capacity. The loss of a morning or evening service can affect business travel, family visits, onward connections and the ability of passengers to respond to delays or cancellations.
Fuel costs are adding another layer of pressure. Domestic aviation turbine fuel prices rose by ₹16 a litre from October 1 to about ₹137 a litre, from ₹121, after increases of ₹6.28 a litre in September and ₹5 a litre in August. ICRA estimates that fuel accounts for 30-40% of airline operating expenses. Domestic ATF prices were already about 20% higher year-on-year in August after oil marketing companies increased prices by ₹5,000 a kilolitre, ICRA said.
The cost structure makes airlines particularly sensitive to changes in fuel prices. Aircraft leases and maintenance are among the industry’s dollar-denominated expenses, leaving carriers exposed to both fuel movements and changes in the rupee’s value. Higher operating costs do not automatically translate into a uniform fare increase, because airlines still compete for passengers and adjust prices by route, booking window and demand. But on sectors where demand is strong and flight options are limited, the scope for those costs to appear in fares is greater.
This is why the current increase cannot be explained by demand alone. Demand remains strong on routes linking major metros, including Delhi-Mumbai, Delhi-Bengaluru, Mumbai-Delhi and Mumbai-Bengaluru, as well as on connections between the largest cities and Patna and Kochi. Traditional leisure destinations such as Goa continue to attract passengers, with bookings reported to be up 10% year-on-year. Leh, Dehradun and Amritsar are also seeing strong festive-season demand, according to Aloke Bajpai, co-founder and group co-CEO of ixigo.
The result is a market in which passengers face different pressures depending on their destination. A route receiving additional capacity may offer more competitive fares or a wider choice of travel times. Another route with fewer services can become expensive even if its airlines are using larger aircraft. The same national airline network can therefore appear well supplied in aggregate while remaining difficult or costly for passengers on selected corridors.
The airport network is also being reshaped. The increase in Delhi-Navi Mumbai capacity reflects the opening and ramp-up of a new airport, while the rise on Mumbai-Jamnagar points to a stronger airline presence on that corridor. These changes could eventually provide more options, but the available data show that network expansion is uneven. New or growing links do not necessarily compensate passengers for reduced frequency on other routes, particularly during peak travel periods.
International aviation is developing differently. OAG data show that international flights scheduled for the October-December quarter are up 3% year-on-year and seats are up 2%, slightly faster than the domestic market. Planned capacity to Saudi Arabia is up 22%, while capacity to Canada has risen 27%. Planned capacity to China has quadrupled, although capacity to Thailand is down 8%.
Passenger preferences are shifting towards overseas leisure destinations as well. Ixigo reported that bookings to Hanoi have more than doubled year-on-year, while Bali bookings are up 89%, Colombo 76%, Bangkok 74%, Abu Dhabi 38% and Singapore 12%. Easier visa access and improving connectivity are supporting international travel, although Yatra said international searches and bookings have softened overall, with Southeast Asia and West Asia continuing to show strong demand.
This contrast matters for India’s urban mobility system because airports are not isolated transport facilities. They connect metropolitan labour markets, family networks, tourism economies and regional centres. When domestic flight schedules become more concentrated, the effect is felt not only in ticket prices but also in the timing and reliability of connections between cities. Smaller cities that depend on a limited number of daily services are more exposed to schedule reductions than large metropolitan markets with multiple airlines and alternative transport options.
The current data also place greater importance on how airlines, airports and regulators measure capacity. Seats are a useful indicator, but they do not capture the full value of frequency, departure timing or route resilience. A network with many seats concentrated into a small number of flights can be less useful to passengers than one with slightly fewer seats distributed across more departure windows. The report does not establish a regulatory response to this issue, but it makes the operational trade-off visible.
For travellers, the immediate question is whether fares will continue to rise as the festive season approaches. Yatra expects another 15-20% increase on high-demand routes where capacity remains constrained. That is a forecast attributed to the travel company, not a confirmed outcome across the entire domestic network. The supplied data support a more limited conclusion: fare pressure is already strongest where demand is high, fuel costs are rising and airlines have reduced the number of available services.
The evidence therefore points to a structural change in how domestic airfares are being formed. The headline numbers are driven by the interaction of demand, fuel costs and airline scheduling, but the passenger experience depends heavily on the individual route. The developments to monitor are the final winter schedules, the pace at which Navi Mumbai Airport adds services, movements in ATF prices and whether airlines restore or further reduce frequencies on high-demand domestic corridors.