Soon after the bailout plan of Jet Airways reached in its final stage, the airfares which have been skyrocketing from the last few weeks seems to be stabilizing. The Jet Airways is about to get an interim emergency funding from SBI lead consortium of lenders. This eased the stoking tensions in the Indian aviation sector.
Along with this, the decision of SpiceJet to use some of the grounded planes of Jet Airways once completed will bring back the aviation industry to normalcy and hence will lead to drop in airfares.
Jet Airways on Monday said that it will be getting ₹1,500 crore as interim funds by lenders and the carrier will be using funds to pay pending rental to lessors and pay salary arrears to its Pilots and employees so that it can continue its flying operations like normal. Jet Airways has a 119 plane fleet but as of now only 34 are in operation and the rest of others were grounded due to non-payment to lessors.
Apart from this, the DGCA ban on Boeing 737 Max 8 after the Etopian airline crash on March 10, severely impacted the aviation business as a lot of airlines had to ground its Boeing 737 Max 8 which lead to quick escalation of prices.
Also read: Airfares might shoot up by 20% due to grounding of about 50 planes
Apart from this, Several international flights too have been cancelled on account of restrictions on using Pakistan airspace by commercial airlines owing to escalation in Indo-Pak tensions after the Pulwama terror attack.
Prices of tickets booked a day in advance on key routes like Delhi-Mumbai hiked by about 23% in the last two weeks, as per available data from various online ticket booking portals. But now after more flights getting pressed into service, flight cancellation number will surely mitigate, which will ease the pressure on airlines. Airlines tend to jack up prices to prevent fresh bookings while they struggle to accommodate affected passengers of canceled flights.
Also read:As DGCA grounds Boeing 737 MAX 8, Airfares witness upto 100% hike