No worm for early birds on domestic air ticket counter as advance flight booking advantage fades

New Delhi: For years, airlines typically followed a simple proposition: reward passengers with cheaper fares if they booked early and charge a premium to those booking at the last minute. That advantage may be vanishing, with domestic carriers keeping fares high months ahead.

Take the prime Delhi-Mumbai route, for example. Passengers trying to book a flight for the next day are getting an economy one-way fare of ₹6,200 from Akasa Air, ₹6,500 from IndiGo and ₹6,900 from Air India.

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The same fares apply to bookings for February 2027 - flights that just a few months earlier would have been easily available for around ₹3,800.

Simply put, airlines are changing the rules of pricing in a market dominated by IndiGo and Air India group-who account for 70% and 25%, respectively-leaving Akasa and SpiceJet with much smaller shares. With fewer flights and less competition, the early-bird fare may be disappearing from India's domestic routes.

Reduced capacity

"It's only a domestic market trend," said Manoj Samuel, CEO of Mumbai-based Riya Travel and Tours India, which handles a large amount of corporate travel, including for blue-chip technology firms, referring to the changed revenue management practice. "You can still get return tickets to Bangkok for ₹26,000."

So why this new pricing strategy? According to Samuel, the early-bird advantage has gone partly because the capacity has reduced. "IndiGo has cut capacity (number of flights) and Air India is not scaling up," he said.

The new pricing strategy also suggests airlines are unsure how long the current US-Iran war -which has pushed jet fuel prices more than 30% higher year on year-will last.

They are, therefore, unwilling to sell forward tickets at cheaper rates. Also, with little competition in the Indian market, there is no pressure on them to follow suit, experts said.

The collapse of Jet Airways and Go First, along with merger of Vistara and AirAsia India into Air India group, over the last seven years has led to even fewer choices for passengers.

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No Change Anytime Soon

Data shows much higher revenue for airlines from flying the same numbers of seat capacity on domestic routes in recent times, reflecting higher airfares.

IndiGo's reported data shows its revenue per available seat kilometre (RASK) has risen over 50% since Jet Airways collapsed. While the airline had a RASK of 3.7 in the summer of 2018, the same metric now stands at 5.66. RASK measures how much revenue an airline generates for every available seat-kilometre flown.

Fuel Worries

There is little indication that this pricing power will ease anytime soon.

A former leadership executive of an airline, who did not want to be named, fears 2027 could also be a year of higher fares for the travelling public, with not enough capacity coming in. He noted that daily domestic flight capacity has fallen from around 3,200 flights to around 2,800-3,000 now, following the fuel price increase and airspace restrictions.

Had there been no war, the upcoming winter schedule could have seen this number go beyond 3,400 flights per day, pushing airlines to offer relatively cheaper fares. But fuel prices could keep that capacity from returning even if the conflict eases.