Domestic flights from Mangalore go haywire

And why…

MANGALORE: Businessman Abdul Wahab had to make a sudden trip from Bangalore to Mangalore recently. He walked into the office of one of the airlines at the BIAL airport. The ticket he bought cost him Rs. 8900. A while ago when he made same trip the ticket had cost him Rs.3800 on a no frill airline.

Wahab is not alone. Wildly swaying ticket fares have kept common air travelers at bay. The airlines' loss is railways' gain, they say. There are many air travelers in Mangalore-Mumbai-Bangalore sector who have undergone this traumatic experience and paid, cursing the airlines under their breath.

Abhijit Kamath, a hotelier paid 10,300 to Mumbai. He said, "I am a fool to spend so much; with little more planning I could have taken the convenient Konkan Railway train and arrived in Mumbai paying only a fraction to what I paid to the Airlines."

The airline officials told DNA news on Wednesday that the fares are worked out on a day-to-day demand basis. If the passenger wanted to travel to within 3-4 hours before the check in time the fare will go up by 25 to 35 per cent and if the time is shorter the fare could go up by 45-50 per cent.

Where they killing the goose that lays golden egg? It seems to. According to the statistics available with the Airport, 2007-08 had been a bad year for air travel from Mangalore.

The domestic flights originating from Mangalore were 7,788, carrying a total of 5,35,616 passengers. The corresponding figure for 2008 till November 30, works out to be 8000 flights ferrying only 3,87,693, which indicates that the domestic flights between Mangalore and other destinations have become highly unviable. And, say frequent travelers, don't blame this on economic meltdown alone, please.

One folly begets another. To offset the loss airline companies go jacking up their fares which does not work out for the air passengers between Mangalore-Mumbai and Mangalore-Bangalore.

While Mangalore-Bangalore fare is  Rs. 4900 on a reserved seat, it goes anything up from Rs. 8900 to 9000 per seat if the tickets are bought over the counter. Rates have also gone up in Mangalore-Mumbai sector with the cost wildly varying depending on varied factors.

Mangalore-Bangalore flights have taken the most beating. The airline tickets have not only become costlier but the passenger has to spend an extra two hours to travel between the Devanahalli airport to the city as the airport is situated some 40 kilometers away from the city.

The effect of global melt down and cash crunch may have contributed to the slack in domestic air travel, but the unimaginative fare structure has done not a little harm. The figures of August -November 2008 shows a total of 40,352 people have flown on domestic routes from Mangalore while the figure for the corresponding period last year was 47,207.
 
And, what was the solution? The cure proved deadlier than disease. Following the decline in the custom the airlines slashed the number of flights from Mangalore.

Jet Airways has stopped the evening flight between Mangalore and Bangalore for nearly two months before resuming it a week ago while Kingfisher Red has re-scheduled its flights restricting to four flights from six to Bangalore.