New Delhi: The Centre Friday informed the Supreme Court that rules on airfares under the Bharatiya Vayuyan Adhiniyam, 2024 have been finalised and will be published within two weeks. Solicitor General Tushar Mehta made the submission before a bench headed by Justice Vikram Nath, which is hearing a PIL against “unpredictable fluctuations” in airfare during the festive season. With the court setting the next hearing on 16 November, it appears that travellers visiting home for Chhath Puja and Diwali will get no respite from high airfare.
Filed by activist S Laxminarayanan, the plea seeks an independent regulator to ensure transparency and passenger protection in the civil aviation sector. Justices Nath, R Mahadevan, and Aparesh Kumar Singh asked Mehta to place the published rules before the bench on the next date of hearing.
Fares on key domestic routes have shot up over the past few years. LocalCircles, a social media platform, conducted a national survey to understand how much more air travellers are paying to go home this festival season. It found that 54 per cent of the respondents are paying over 50 per cent more in 2026 than last year.
What’s driving up the price?
Civil Aviation Minister K Rammohan Naidu said last month that the government will not cap fares this festive season. On 15 October, he said sharp changes in aviation turbine fuel (ATF) prices were making it hard to keep fares affordable. The aviation ministry has instead asked airlines to keep fares reasonable during peak demand.
However, higher fuel costs explain only part of the rise. Fuel makes up about 55-60 per cent of an airline’s operating cost, and ATF is up about 13 per cent this month. Yet, the survey has found that a majority of travellers are paying 50 per cent to over 100 per cent more than the fares in 2025. One-way fares into Bihar are nearly three to four times those on the return leg, pointing to demand-driven surge pricing.
The LocalCircles survey received nearly 20,000 responses from air travellers located across 277 districts of India. About 61 per cent of respondents were men while 39 per cent were women. A total of 45 per cent were from tier 1 districts, 31 per cent from tier 2, and 24 per cent from tier 3 and 4 districts. The survey was conducted via the LocalCircles platform.
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