Jat agitation hits road & rail traffic, airfares touch sky high

NEW DELHI: Airfares soared to new highs on routes connecting Delhi with Chandigarh, Amritsar and Jaipur, as the Jat agitation left road and rail traffic in Haryana crippled and left flights as the only option to those who cannot postpone their travel. On Sunday, lastminute airfare between Chandigarh and Delhi crossed Rs 99,000, for a one-way economy class ticket. Similar tickets between Amritsar and Delhi were priced at as high as Rs 23,000 for Monday. No seats were available on flights out of Amritsar on Sunday.

As airlines said they were sold out, the civil aviation ministry responded quickly by announcing several new flights by Air India and private airlines over Sunday and Monday. The government also fixed the fares on flights operated by national carrier Air India.

One of the travel portals offered a Jet Airways connection between Chandigarh and Delhi for Rs 99,128, with a travel time between the two destinations of over six hours. The direct flight time on the route is under an hour.

Jet Airways countered allegations of extremely higher fares on the ground that these fares were a combination of various routes and were being offered by third party travel agents as options, and not by the airline.

“Most Jet Airways direct flights to/from Amritsar, Chandigarh, Jammu, Srinagar, Leh and Dehradun have been sold out. Some fares seen on third party online travel portals are constructed by those websites by combining the last available seats on indirect routes with multi-stop flights constructed over any mid-point transfer city to create a roundabout itinerary,” said a release from the airline.

In a respite for passengers, Air India announced to limit fares under Rs 4,000. The all-inclusive one-way fare between Delhi and Chandigarh is Rs 3,339, while that between Delhi and Amritsar is Rs 3,960, it said in a news release.