By Admin 
Flights Tickets Surge: Indigo, one of the country’s largest airline companies, is going through a very bad phase. More than 500 flights were canceled yesterday and even today more than 400 flights have been cancelled. Due to this, passengers are facing difficulties on a large scale. Those who have to leave for some important work are stranded at the airport. This is the condition of thousands of passengers in Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Kolkata and Ahmedabad.
Aviation sector suffered a blow
IndiGo is the country’s largest airline in terms of market share. In such a situation, large scale cancellations have affected the entire aviation sector of India. Now, finding opportunities in the disaster, other airline companies including Indigo also started increasing the fares of flights drastically. Travelers and booking portals said on Friday that domestic sector tickets of many airlines have now become more expensive than return fares for international flights to the United States or Australia.
Rents are skyrocketing
Low-cost carrier SpiceJet is today charging up to Rs 80,000 for flights on certain routes, which is much higher than the normal fares of Rs 5,000-Rs 12,000. A one-way economy class ticket for a two-stop Air India flight costs Rs 70,329. Additionally, a business class ticket on the last-minute Air India connection from Hyderabad to Bhopal, which has three stops, has reportedly reached Rs 127,090.
A SpiceJet ticket, whose normal fare ranges between Rs 5,000 to Rs 8,000, has now increased to around Rs 38,000.
Delhi-Bangalore one-way economy ticket is now selling for Rs 52,694, up from Rs 21,000. Today the fare from Delhi to Jaipur is Rs 88 thousand, while the fare from Delhi to New York is Rs 47,500 and the fare from Delhi to London is Rs 27 thousand. That means the domestic flight ticket is almost double the international ticket. Not only this, tickets from Delhi to Patna and Bangalore are also being sold for Rs 40-40 thousand.
Why is there shortage of staff in Indigo?
DGCA made some changes in the rules related to the work of crew members and pilots from November 1. This was named flight duty time limitation. Under this, two days of week off in a week was made mandatory for pilots. That means, according to the new rule, they will get 48 hours of rest in a week, which was earlier 36 hours.
Apart from this, night duty and duty timing were also changed, under which now night duty will be from 12 AM – 6 AM and the flying time in night shift was fixed at 8 hours and overall duty time was fixed at 10 hours. These rules were implemented so that the pilots get adequate rest and safety is increased. Due to this new rule, the demand for pilots suddenly increased, which had the biggest impact on Indigo because its network is very large. Here, after the Indigo crisis, DGCA has withdrawn the FDTL rule and has also said that this order will be implemented with immediate effect.
Also read:
300 flights canceled and Indigo shares crash, effect of DGCA action visible