Ticket Sales Increased With The Decrease In Airfares

Chennai:  Want to go to any of your favorite destinations in India to celebrate your birthday or Valentine’s Day or any celebrations this February and March? Then book your air tickets now. February and March are the months that are preferred less for travelling thus the domestic airlines have launched air tickets with discounts for three days for these two months. The three-day discounts launched by domestic airlines have boosted forward bookings of carriers in February and March. Earlier the maximum occupancy in the flights in such season was maximum 20 percent but now it is 50 percent. Among other domestic airlines, Spicejet was the first to introduce this offer.

Due to the current offers on air tickets many people who used to see air travel as an expensive option now can at least think of buying one. Even the people who were not planning to travel have also changed their mind and booked the tickets, said the sectoral sources. In order to recover the loss airlines have decided to sell higher fare slabs but this might be bit difficult. 

Often it is seen that the domestic airlines sell 40,000-50,000 tickets on an average daily. There are approximately a capacity of 180-190 seats in Boeing 737s and the Airbus A320, that are operated by the domestic airlines. The operating costs and break-even seat factor always depends on the route and airline. “A low cost airline would need to earn Rs 7-8 lakh on a one-hour flight to break even, while the earning of a full service airline would have to be higher. In order to fill 70 per cent of seats (125-130 of the 180-190 in a plane), an airline have to charge a net fare of 5,500-6,300 on a passenger to earn that. If the airline has sold a certain number of seats at a discount, then simultaneously it will have to increase its occupancy to more than 70 per cent in order to earn Rs 7-8 lakh. The question is if airlines be able to fill the unsold seats at higher fares. The break-even is still an issue, as operating costs are high,” an aviation expert said.

Cash flow is depended on sales in case of airlines, thus if demand in the season is less than the bookings are equally low. "The limited period discount offer help stimulate demand in a lean quarter. It will help generate cash for the airline. The seats on offer were chosen carefully without compromising flights with high demand. This will also help to widen the narrow flyer-base of the country.  So overall, it’s a good move,'' said Amber Dubey, Partner and head-Aerospace and Defence at global consultancy KPMG.

"The visitor traffic to our website went up four times. We expect the momentum to continue for the next couple of days as well.  The city-booking trends were comparable to non-sale periods, with Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore contributing to the maximum bookings, but some sectors became more popular during the sale due to the discounts being offered. For example, Delhi-Bangalore that is not among the 5 Top-selling sectors on normal days, was the second-most-booked sector during the sale period. Bookings on the Bangalore-Delhi route grew by 800 percent. We saw maximum bookings of 22 percent coming in from Delhi followed by 17 percent bookings from Mumbai and 13percent from Bangalore. Unlike last year, Airlines have been more disciplined this time and discounted advance purchase only.” Said Rajesh Magow, Co-founder & CEO-India, MakeMyTrip as reported in rediff.com.

"Bookings have grown by 40 percent in terms of sales and transactions have grown by 60% in last two days.  Booking systems were stable compare to last year so transactions are happening with ease this time,'' said Manoj Samuel, director of Riya Travels. It is seen that last year airline reservation systems were unable to handle the load due to which even the systems crashed.