Domestic flights three times costlier
Airfares of different domestic routes in the country have increased two to three times due to an influx of passengers trying to bypass a countrywide transport strike being observed since Friday.
Officials of different airlines said the airfare usually remains high during the weekend to accommodate additions of holidaymakers.
But the number of air passengers has increased 10 per cent to 15 per cent on different routes due to the transport strike, leading to the rise in airfare, they said.
"I usually pay Tk 3,300 to Tk 3,500 to fly on the Chattogram-Dhaka route on almost every weekend. But this time, the airfare on this route shot up to Tk 8,000 to Tk 9,000," a civil servant told The Daily Star.
"Finally, I managed to come to Dhaka today (yesterday) hiring a private car," he said wishing anonymity.
The government on Wednesday hiked the price of diesel and kerosene by 23 per cent or Tk 15 per litre.
Transport associations, mainly of commercial vehicle owners, enforced the indefinite strike from Friday morning, causing untold suffering to the public and halting business operations largely.
Bus owners demanded increasing passenger fares to cope with the fuel price hike while the owners of commercial vehicles have demanded cancellation of the government decision to hike prices.
Several thousand holidaymakers have remained stuck in different tourist spots, especially Cox's Bazar, Bandarban and Khagrachhari, due to the transport strike.
Airfares are determined by a strategy called airline revenue management, says the CNBC.
The decisions are made in real time by an algorithm that adjusts fares by using information including past bookings, remaining capacity, average demand for certain routes and the probability of selling more seats later, it says.
Kamrul Islam, general manager of public relations at US-Bangla Airlines, said the matter was not like that the airlines were charging passengers extra.
There is basically 10 slabs of airfare, from low to high, round the year. As demand rises, the low airfare slabs start running out, leaving high airfare slabs for those who come later.
He also said they were now operating flights on different routes at 95 per cent capacity, which was 80 per cent in the recent past.
Mesbah Ul Islam, head of sales and marketing at Novoair, said demand for tickets has increased due to the transport strike.
"When the tickets for low rate slabs run out, the fare for high slabs' tickets will naturally go up. It is the practice in fixing airfare," he said.
He also said they were now operating flights at almost full capacity whereas it was 90 per cent in the recent past.
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