Flying to Kolkata for Durga Puja? Be ready to pay 71% more on Oct 16

NEW DELHI: On most routes in India, a ticket for a flight three days away costs more than one for the same flight a month later. That is how airline pricing works. Seats get dearer as the plane fills and the date closes in. On flights into Kolkata this October, the rule has flipped.

An analysis of airfares captured on the morning of September 16 across 53 domestic routes connecting Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Chennai, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad and Pune shows that a seat into Kolkata for October 16 is priced far above a seat for next week, for next month, and even for boarding a plane the same day.

Read more: TOI-DPA Airfare Index: A flight price tracker that will help you plan trips better

What do the numbers show?

For each route, fares were recorded for six departure dates at once: the same day, and one, seven, 30, 60 and 90 days ahead. Take the median across all seven routes into Kolkata and the pattern is hard to miss. A ticket for tomorrow costs Rs 8,712. For next week, Rs 8,259. To walk up and fly the same day, Rs 9,140. For October 16, Rs 14,117.

That is 71% more than flying next week and 54% more than flying today. On the 40 routes that touch neither end of Kolkata, the October 16 fare is the cheapest of all six readings, at Rs 6,271. Booking ahead saves money, as it usually does.

Why is October 16 the key date?

Because it is where the 30-day reading happened to land, and because of what falls on it.

Most Bengali calendars place Maha Shashthi, the first day of Durga Puja, on October 16 this year. A few place it on October 17. Either way, October 16 is the day travellers arrive.

Vijaya Dashami falls on October 21. The 60-day reading, November 15, sits three weeks after the festival ends and before the December holiday rush, which makes it a reasonable yardstick for a normal travel day.

Is October simply an expensive month to fly?

No, and the data lets you test it. Group all 53 routes by the city they land in and compare the October 16 fare with the November 15 fare on the same route.

Kolkata comes in 65.3% higher. Hyderabad, the next city on the list, is 1.9% higher. The remaining six are all cheaper in October than in November.

Across the 40 routes unconnected to Kolkata, the median works out to 5.6% cheaper in October. So the calendar on its own is pushing fares down between these two dates, not up. Kolkata stands about 71 percentage points away from everywhere else.

Of the 53 routes studied, 17 are dearer on October 16 than on November 15. Nine are more than 20% dearer. Six of those nine fly into Kolkata.

Doesn't every festival do this to fares?

Apparently not. Navratri runs from October 11 to 20 in Gujarat, nine nights of Garba and the biggest event on the state's calendar. The 30-day reading falls squarely inside it. Fares into Ahmedabad for October 16 are 20.9% below the November yardstick. That makes Ahmedabad the cheapest of all eight cities in the study. The likely reason is who travels. Garba is celebrated where people already live, so it does not move many people between cities. Durga Puja pulls a scattered community back to one city in the same week, and that shows up in the fare.

Which cities are paying the most?

Chennai to Kolkata carries the steepest rise at 94.9%. Mumbai follows at 78.1%, Bengaluru at 76.5% and Hyderabad at 65.3%. Then it drops away. Pune is up 26.2%, Delhi 22.2% and Ahmedabad 6%.

In rupees, the extra cost on a single one-way ticket comes to Rs 7,560 from Chennai, Rs 7,310 from Bengaluru and Rs 6,682 from Mumbai. The median across the seven routes is Rs 5,145.