Its raining discounts on the busy Mumbai-Dubai route. Low cost airline IndiGo is offering return fares which are priced 20-25% lower than rivals kick starting a fare war on the route.
Mumbai-Dubai is the busiest international route from India with 91 weekly flights between the two cities and around 21, 000 seats on offer. It was the fourth busiest route from Dubai (behind London, Doha and Kuwait) in 2011. Delhi stood at ninth place.
Currently Emirates offers the highest capacity with 35 weekly flights and 11819 seats on Mumbai-Dubai route. Jet has four daily flights while IndiGo and SpiceJet have a flight each. IndiGo is adding its second daily flight on the route from March and has dropped fares is about 20-25% less than rivals.
IndiGo's competitors like Emirates and Jet Airways are offering return fares around Rs 17,500-18,000. In addition Jet is selling return tickets at around Rs 16,000 through certain travel agents and that fare is not available for sale with all agents. It is likely to lower its fares further to compete with IndiGo on this route. It is also offering discounted fare for one way travel to attract labour traffic.
"There is round the year passenger demand for Dubai. People are looking for shorter and cheaper holidays and Dubai and Bangkok are amongst top preferences. Air fares to Dubai are also less while tickets to Singapore and Hong Kong cost around Rs 30,000 or more,'' said Tina Kanuga, Director, Bathija Travels. She added that the competition on the route is much more intense with thirteen daily flights at present. "IndiGo is offering fares around Rs 14,000 and this will induce other airlines to reduce 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.
