No respite to soaring airfares
Summer season is at its peak and the tourist arrivals to Kashmir too have shown an upward trend. Besides, the locals including students and tradesmen are also heading back to the valley for vacations but the soaring airfares are spoiling the party.
The airfares on Srinagar-Delhi-Jammu circuit are showing no decline despite many private airlines assuring action to put the airfare at reasonable and affordable rates. During the past few weeks Kashmir has witnessed an increased footfall of tourists and as the rush showed some more increase due to the annual Amarnath yatra, airlines have once again resorted to loot and plunder as the air fares have sky rocketed once again.
A cursory look at the travel web portals shows that the airfare on Delhi-Srinagar sector is touching Rs 14,000to 18000 for the coming days. Just two weeks back the air fare on this sector was around 6000 to 8000, making it affordable to the upper middle class.
As per travel portals, the airfare to Srinagar from Metropolitan cities like Bengaluru, Mumbai, Pune and even Kolkata has also seen steep hike. The steep rise in airfare is not only proving a harrowing experience for the tourists but it also is giving a tough time to the people especially the students and patients planning to travel on this circuit.
The rise in airfares especially during winter and the start of tourism season has been pestering the people here for long now. Even the incumbent Governor Satya Pal Malik sought intervention of Prime Minister Narendra Modi for a solution to the exorbitant fares charged by airlines to Kashmir in February, but to no avail.
The Guv wrote to the PM seeking his intervention to cap the prices of air tickets so that the common people do not face problems while travelling to various destinations using the air transport. The Guv had cited the frequent closure of the Jammu-Srinagar National Highway as the reason for putting a control on the airfares.
Notably, every time the Srinagar-Jammu highway, the only motorable link road to Kashmir with the outside world, shuts due to landslides or bad weather, the airfares rise exorbitantly, making travel impossible for the common people here.
The rising cost of air tickets has been a major concern for the tourism Industry as the industry gets hurt badly as tourists prefer to stay away from destinations like Kashmir where their maximum budget gets spent on travel alone.
The rush on the Srinagar-Delhi route is all time high during this time of the year. Not only students but small time traders who visit various states for earning a living during winter months also rush back home creating a demand for tickets.
The vacations of Kashmiri students and working professionals outside the Valley also coincide with the tourist season and this too is seen as a reason for the increase in the rush on this sector and subsequently the fare hike.
As for the private airlines they believe the fares are dynamic, completely based on the demand. But the theory offered by them is hurting the common man both in terms of spending as well as earnings as the tourism Industry gets hurt pretty badly owing to the high cost of tickets to Kashmir.
KV Network
