It’s raining discounts on the busy Mumbai-Dubai route. Low-cost airline IndiGo is offering 20-25 per cent lower return fares and adding a second daily flight on the route from March, starting a fare war on the route.
Mumbai-Dubai is the busiest global route from India, with 91 weekly flights between the two cities and 21,000 seats. It was the fourth-busiest route from Dubai (behind London, Doha and Kuwait) in 2011. Delhi stood at the ninth place.
Emirates offers the highest capacity, with 35 weekly flights and 11,819 seats on the Mumbai-Dubai route. Jet Airways has four daily flights while IndiGo and SpiceJet have a flight each.
Emirates and Jet are offering return fares between Rs 17,500 and Rs 18,000.
Jet is selling return tickets at around Rs 16,000 via certain travel agents only. It is likely to lower its fares.
"Air fares to Dubai are also less while tickets to Singapore and Hong Kong cost Rs 30,000 or more,'' said Tina Kanuga, director, Bathija Travels. "IndiGo is offering fares at around Rs 14,000, this will induce others to cut fares.''
According to Dubai Airports, India is Dubai International’s single biggest country destination in terms of passenger numbers. "The passenger traffic between Dubai and India continued to show robust growth during the past year, with total passenger traffic rising 7.4% year on year to 7.34 million passengers in 2012. Traffic was bolstered by the introduction of SpiceJet which added new flights from Delhi, Mumbai, Kochi and Ahmedabad to Dubai. Air India Express, Indigo and Emirates also added new flights and destinations during the year, Dubai airports said.
