Rail or road? Passengers scramble for alternatives at Delhi airport as airfares skyrocket amid IndiGo crisis

At the IndiGo enquiry counter in Terminal 2, a passenger fretted over possibly missing her flight to Taiwan from Mumbai. “I was in Chandigarh and had to leave for Mumbai via Indore, but it got rescheduled for today from Delhi…I travelled by road to Delhi only to see that even that flight got cancelled,” said the woman, pleading anonymity.

Standing in the queue at the counter for hours, she checked the prices of other airlines and much to her shock, discovered that a ticket to Mumbai would cost her Rs 48,000. “I found two other people who wanted to reach Mumbai by today and the taxi is costing us 30,000 rupees…that means 10,000 per head. But that is better than paying such an exorbitant amount for the flight,” she said.

A group of 80 passengers who were on their corporate team trip from Bengaluru to Azerbaijan found themselves with no choice when they saw that their flights had been cancelled.

Small groups of men lay scattered on the airport’s foyer as the different teams’ managers decided how to arrange transportation or hotels for such a huge group.

“We’re still deciding what to do,” said Gautham Shetty, one of the managers. “We’ll most probably book a few hotels…we looked at trains but the tickets were not available for all of us. If nothing works out, we’ll take a bus,” he said. Shetty acknowledged that a bus ride would take the group almost two days to reach Bengaluru. “We’re keeping it as a last resort idea. We’ll most probably stay back and wait for the replacement tickets from the airlines,” he said.

Meanwhile, prices of flights from Delhi shot off the roof amid growing demand.

While most flights were booked out for Friday, flights to Bangalore, Mumbai, Kolkata and Goa during the weekend saw prices as high as Rs 76,863 (Air India Delhi to Goa), Rs 60,715 (Air India Delhi to Chennai) and Rs 48,463 (Akasa Air Delhi to Bangalore). A ray of hope remained for some passengers as SpiceJet announced 100 additional flights to their roster on Friday evening, causing the airline’s flight fares to plummet and leaving passengers with some respite.