The Times of India (Chennai) ·
Flying to Kolkata for Durga Puja? Be ready to pay 71% more on Oct 16
NEW DELHI: On most routes in India, a ticket for a flight three days away costs more than one for the same flight a month later. That is how airline pricing works. Seats get dearer as the plane fills and the date closes in.
On flights into Kolkata this October, the rule has flipped.
An analysis of airfares captured on the morning of September 16 across 53 domestic routes connecting Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Chennai, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad and Pune shows that a seat into Kolkata for October 16 is priced far above a seat for next week, for next month, and even for boarding a plane the same day.
What do the numbers show?
For each route, fares were recorded for six departure dates at once: the same day, and one, seven, 30, 60 and 90 days ahead. Take the median across all seven routes into Kolkata and the pattern is hard to miss. A ticket for tomorrow costs Rs 8,712. For next week, Rs 8,259. To walk up and fly the same day, Rs 9,140. For October 16, Rs 14,117.
On Kolkata routes the booking curve runs backwards
That is 71% more than flying next week and 54% more than flying today. On the 40 routes that touch neither end of Kolkata, the October 16 fare is the cheapest of all six readings, at Rs 6,271. Booking ahead saves money, as it usually does.
Why is October 16 the key date?
Because it is where the 30-day reading happened to land, and because of what falls on it.
Most Bengali calendars place Maha Shashthi, the first day of Durga Puja, on October 16 this year. A few place it on October 17. Either way, October 16 is the day travellers arrive.
Vijaya Dashami falls on October 21. The 60-day reading, November 15, sits three weeks after the festival ends and before the December holiday rush, which makes it a reasonable yardstick for a normal travel day.
Is October simply an expensive month to fly?
No, and the data lets you test it.
Group all 53 routes by the city they land in and compare the October 16 fare with the November 15 fare on the same route.
Kolkata comes in 65.3% higher. Hyderabad, the next city on the list, is 1.9% higher. The remaining six are all cheaper in October than in November.
One destination in the country is priced for October
Across the 40 routes unconnected to Kolkata, the median works out to 5.6% cheaper in October. So the calendar on its own is pushing fares down between these two dates, not up. Kolkata stands about 71 percentage points away from everywhere else.
Of the 53 routes studied, 17 are dearer on October 16 than on November 15. Nine are more than 20% dearer. Six of those nine fly into Kolkata.
Doesn't every festival do this to fares?
Apparently not.
Navratri runs from October 11 to 20 in Gujarat, nine nights of Garba and the biggest event on the state's calendar. The 30-day reading falls squarely inside it. Fares into Ahmedabad for October 16 are 20.9% below the November yardstick. That makes Ahmedabad the cheapest of all eight cities in the study.
The likely reason is who travels. Garba is celebrated where people already live, so it does not move many people between cities. Durga Puja pulls a scattered community back to one city in the same week, and that shows up in the fare.
Which cities are paying the most?
Chennai to Kolkata carries the steepest rise at 94.9%. Mumbai follows at 78.1%, Bengaluru at 76.5% and Hyderabad at 65.3%. Then it drops away. Pune is up 26.2%, Delhi 22.2% and Ahmedabad 6%.
What Puja week adds to a seat into Kolkata
In rupees, the extra cost on a single one-way ticket comes to Rs 7,560 from Chennai, Rs 7,310 from Bengaluru and Rs 6,682 from Mumbai. The median across the seven routes is Rs 5,145.
Is it about how few flights these routes have?
That is the obvious explanation, and it does not survive the numbers.
Ahmedabad has four flights a day into Kolkata and the smallest increase of the seven. Bengaluru has eleven and sits third from the top. Pune has three and sits fifth.
Delhi does fit the idea, with 21 flights a day and the second-smallest rise. But rank the seven routes by daily flights and by fare increase and the two orders barely line up at all.
Thin routes are not what is driving this.
Why do only the incoming flights cost more?
This is the clearest signal in the whole set.
For each city with fare data in both directions, compare the flight into Kolkata with the flight out of it, on the same two dates.
Mumbai to Kolkata is up 78%. Kolkata to Mumbai is up 5%. Bengaluru to Kolkata is up 76%. Kolkata to Bengaluru is 22% cheaper.
On every one of the six city pairs, the incoming leg carries the bigger increase. The median rise going in is 46%. Going out, fares are 8% lower than in November.
Airlines are not charging a premium for Kolkata in October. They are charging for landing in Kolkata in October. A seat flying the other way, on the same aircraft, the same morning, is priced like any ordinary Friday.
What should you do if you are flying for Puja?
Three things the data supports.
Fares fall sharply once the festival passes.
Flying into Kolkata on November 15 costs about a third less than on October 16. If your trip can shift by a few weeks, shifting it is worth roughly Rs 5,000 a head each way.
The return leg is not the problem.
Almost all of the extra cost sits in the flight in. Price the two legs separately rather than assuming a round trip has doubled.
Waiting will not help.
These are already 30-day fares on routes where seats are filling. Nothing in this data suggests the October 16 price improves from here.
- Every figure here comes from a single capture of advertised fares taken on the morning of September 16, 2026, covering 53 routes between Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Chennai, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad and Pune, at six fixed departure dates.
- The October 16 and November 15 readings differ both in departure date and in how far ahead they were booked, so the normal shape of airline pricing is mixed into every percentage quoted. The comparison group is the correction for that: across the 40 routes unconnected to Kolkata, the same calculation comes out slightly negative, which means booking distance alone cannot produce the Kolkata numbers.
- Fare data for the Kolkata to Chennai route was not available in this capture, so Chennai appears in the charts of incoming flights but not in the two-direction comparison. Chennai to Kolkata is present, and is the steepest route in the set.