New Delhi: Air travel will now become a little expensive as the government has decided to increase the lower limit on airfares by five per cent amid rising aviation turbine fuel (ATF) prices, Civil Aviation Minister Hardeep Singh Puri on Friday.
The upper limit on airfares will remain as it is for now. Just a month back, the Centre had increased the lower and upper limits on domestic airfares by 10-30 per cent due to rising ATF prices.
Read:| Airlines allowed to deploy up to 80% capacity in domestic sector
While announcing the resumption of scheduled domestic flights in May last year, the Aviation Ministry had placed limits on airfares through seven bands classified based on flight duration.
The first band consists of flights having less than a 40-minute duration and its lower limit has been increased to Rs 2,310 on Friday. The lower limit for the highest band of flights having a duration of 180-210 minutes was further hiked to Rs 7,560.
"We may open the sector for 100% operations when daily passenger traffic crosses 3.5 lakhs on 3 occasions in a month," Puri tweeted.
Currently, the airlines are permitted to operate not more than 80 per cent of their per-COVID domestic flights.
