This year, 2024, I have taken 29 flights across 3 continents (Europe, Africa, Asia), 11 countries (India, Taiwan, Singapore, Vietnam, Egypt, Kazhakstan, Greece, Romania, Albania, Malta, Italy) through 9 different airlines (Kuwait Air, Indigo, Fly Arystan, Air Asia, Singapore Airlines, Etihad, Agean, Ryanair, WizzAir).
Of all the flights I took, I tried to calculate which airline is the most expensive. The parameter I used to decide this is the cost of ticket price I paid divide by number of flying hours, to decide how much each of these airlines are costing me for 1 hour of flying time.
In this method, I find India's Indigo is the most expensive airline I flew this year, costing me upto 5000 INR per 1 hour of flying. Maybe Air India would have matched Indigo on this, just that I didn't have any flights with Air India in 2024.
Fly Arystan is the cheapest- but sadly that airline has very few
flights and getting that 7400 return ticket is very difficult now. So it
is a one off case, not very easy to get all the time.
Air Asia
still stays one of the cheapest airlines to fly internationally- if you
get lucky and can spot good deals, you will get tickets costing about
1200-1300 INR per hour of flying, which is a good deal under current
circumstances.
Singapore Airlines was the most expensive ticket I
bought this year- 34000 INR return Mumbai to Taipei. I could have
visited Taipei on VietJet Air or Air Asia for about 27000 INR onwards.
That extra 7000 goes for inflight meals, entertainment,
amenities,baggage allowance (I didn't use) etc. The flight to Taipei was
also very long, so on a per hour basis, Singapore airline ticket costed
me just 1416 INR per hour, which is an amazing deal for a full service
airline. (Last year's ticket to Busan was 30k and 2 hours extra flying,
even cheaper.
Rest of the ticket details you can see in image below.
Most regional flights within Europe on EasyJet, RyanAir, WizzAir etc cost about 2000-3000 INR per hour of flying, if planned few months in advance, except some high demand tourist destinations like Santorini.
Indigo (or rather India's domestic flight tickets) are most expensive, costing as much as 5000 INR per hour of flying or more. Some destination like Gangtok costs 60k return from BLR, for a total of 6 hours of flying, costing 10000 INR per hour of flying.
Other thing about Indigo- it doesn't give any discount for early booking.
BLR-MRU return: Feb 2025 is 31k, but October 2025 is 70k!
Except a few high competition sections like Delhi Mumbai, BLR Mumbai, HYD Mumbai, most flights to Tier 2 cities cost a bomb in India, impacting domestic tourism and travel.
What do you think about this?
