5 Reasons Why Vande Bharat flights are expensive ?

If you think Vande Bharat flights are expensive, its important to know the reasons. India’s National Carrier Air India started doing Vande Bharat flights for getting thousands of people back to India who were stuck in foreign countries during Corona Pandemic.

Many people have been blaming Govt and national carrier for over charging . Here are the 5 Reasons Why Vande Bharat flights are expensive ?

Reason 1 :

One leg of the sector is going empty (ferry ) or very few passengers. For eg If Air India has to get stranded people from Moscow, than aircraft is going empty from Delhi to Moscow due which operating cost of the Airline has increased drastically.

Reason 2 :

The regular demand has gone very low , the revenue has dropped but all fixed expense remains same, due which operating cost for an airline has increased multifold.

Reason 3 :

Misc expenses like PPE Kits, thermal scanning, face sheild for passengers and crew has put a financial burden on airlines. On top of that as per DGCA guidelines every crew has to undergo 3 Covid Test for operating a flight. One test before the flight, second test immediately after coming back and third test after 5 days. Every flight has minimum 6 crew and maximum of 24 crew. You can calculate how much airline has to pay just for doing the Covid test itself for every repatriation flight .

Reason 4 :

Accommodation & Medical Expenses for crew has increased . Now even if there is domestic sector of Vande Bharat flights , the crew has to undergo Covid Test two times and has to stay in hotel for minimum 2 days or until the covid test results come negative.

Reason 5 :

Utilization of aircraft has reduced by almost 3 folds. Currently, after doing every sector, aircraft is fully sanitized along with cleaning which takes 1 hour to 2 hour for every turn around.Previously the turn around time for an aircraft was as low as 22 minutes now it has increased by 3 folds which has reduced the aircraft utilization every day. Now airline has only able to fly an aircraft for 8-9 hours every day which was previously 13-15 hours daily.

These are the reasons why Vande Bharat flights are expensive as compared to regular flights. All the airlines across the World are struggling due Corona Virus. There have been thousands of people who got unemployed and millions of people have got pay cuts across the world.

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