Air travel becomes expensive for the second time in 2 months, domestic fares hiked by 5%

New Delhi: The central government has given another big blow to the general public already facing high inflation. On Friday, the fares of domestic flights in the country were increased by 5 percent.

The information was shared by Civil Aviation Minister Hardeep Singh Puri through his Twitter handle.

He said that in view of the continuous increase in the price of aviation turbine fuel (ATF), the fares of domestic aircraft have been increased by 5 percent. Due to this, air travel can be a bit expensive. Puri said that there has been no change in the upper fare band.

"There has been a continuous rise in price of ATF so it has been decided to increase the lower fare band by 5% keeping the upper fare band unchanged. We may open the sector for 100% operations when daily passenger traffic crosses 3.5 lakhs on 3 occasions in a month," he tweeted.

"Last few days have seen a decline in the number of air passengers largely due to restrictions & imposition of compulsory RT-PCR test by various states. Due to this we have decided to retain the permissible limit to 80% of schedule," he added.

A month earlier, the government had increased the minimum fares of the airlines by 10 per cent and the maximum fares by 30 per cent. While announcing the resumption of scheduled domestic flights in May last year, domestic aircraft were divided into 7 levels on the basis of flight durations. Under this, the flight fare was fixed according to 40 minutes, 40–60 minutes, 60–90 minutes, 90–120 minutes, 120–150 minutes, 150–180 minutes, 180–210 minutes.

Since December 1 last year, the prices of aircraft fuel have increased 5 times. On December 1, the price of ATF was increased by 7.6 percent i.e. Rs 3,288.38 per kiloliter, 6.3 percent i.e. Rs 2,941.5 per kiloliter on December 16 and 3.69 percent i.e. Rs 1,817.62 per kiloliter on January 1 this year.