Chennai: Ahead of Pongal (a harvest festival) and the holiday season, soaring airfares have left the homebound Tamilians in jittery. Pongal is usually celebrated with great pomp across Tamil Nadu. People living in Chennai and its suburbs for work along with college students from distant places return to their hometowns en masse to celebrate the festival with family.
Come January 14, the beginning day of Pongal, thousands of people will start taking buses, trains and flights from the previous night. As bookings are full, passengers are vying for government buses. The state government has also arranged special train and bus services to accommodate the festive rush.
Meanwhile, there have been allegations of charging exorbitant fares against private buses. In the scenario, passengers are exploring flight options and thronging the Chennai Airport since Friday evening.
ETV Bharat tracked the e-ticketing portal Flydealfare to gauge the airfares which usually spike during festive seasons, and prices of Chennai-origin flights have skyrocketed. The average and current airfares of different destinations from Chennai on Saturdays looked like this:
| Route | Regular Fare | Saturday's Fare |
| Chennai-Madurai | Rs.3,999 | Rs.17,645 |
| Chennai-Trichy | Rs.2,199 | Rs.14,337 |
| Chennai-Coimbatore | Rs.3,485 | Rs.16,647 |
| Chennai-Thoothukudi | Rs.4,199 | Rs.12,866 |
| Chennai-Thiruvananthapuram | Rs.3,296 | Rs.17,771 |
| Chennai-Salem | Rs.2,799 | Rs.9,579 |
Source: Flydealfare.
The Chennai-Thoothukudi and Chennai-Salem flights were fully booked for Saturday and a few tickets are available for Sunday. Due to the rush, people from the southern districts are opting for Chennai-Thiruvananthapuram flights, leading to a price surge in the route.
About Pongal
The history of the Thai Pongal festival can be traced to the Sangam Age. Known as the Dravidian harvest festival, scholars say the 2,000-year-old festival was well-known as Thai Nadal. History has it that unmarried girls worshipped god for the prosperity of agricultural wealth and they observed penance by not drinking milk and the items prepared from it, not applying oil on hair and taking baths at dawn.
In Tamil parlance, Pongal means 'overflow' or 'boiling over. The festival is also popular as Thai Pongal, the four-day festival is observed in the Tamil month of Thai when crops like rice are harvested and the cultivators pay their obeisance and gratitude to the god and the fertility and generosity of the field. Homes in Tamil Nadu are decorated with traditional designs called kolams, made from ground rice. Aside from Tamil Nadu, neighbouring states Andhra Pradesh and Telangana also celebrate it.
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