new delhi air travelers should not expect any relief from skyhigh domestic airfares this festive season which are up by over 30 since august despite airlines increasing domestic flights in coming winter airlines will operate about 11900 weekly domestic flights 3 more than the summer schedule but still way less than the figure of 13500 seen two years back when kingfisher airlines kfa was still flying the drastic drop in domestic capacity from kfa days will mean that fares remain high despite the hike in flights from this summer to winter the aviation ministry has approved the domestic winter schedule of 11886 weekly flights up from the summer figure of 11541 air india jet airways and alliance air will operate less domestic flights than their summer schedule and other airlines have added some flights said sources oneway fares on all important metro routes like delhi to mumbai or kolkata are about rs 10000 if the ticket is bought within seven days of travel date earlier fares would shoot up during the peak of peak travel seasons like puja holidays or diwali now they are consistently high and will remain so unless the capacity increases with the new tata airlines or fuel prices drop or there is some miracle said anil kalsi of delhibased ambey travels the fares are about 25 to 30 higher than the summer rates travel industry insiders say that given the way lossmaking domestic airline industry with the exception of indigo is cutting domestic flights and using their planes on the more profitable foreign routes fares for flying within the country will remain high the only relief they say will come when tata sons launch their budget airline with airasia and the full service carrier with singapore airlines on their part airline officials say that the government must rationalize operating costs without which offering low fares would only mean ending up like kingfisher mounting losses and capacity drop since kingfisher shut down has led to a drastic hike in fares indian airlines have collectively lost rs 53650 crore from 2007 to 2013 and their total debtcumdues on march 31 2013 were a staggering 107 lakh crore according to the centre for asia pacific aviation the winter of 2011 when trouble in kingfisher had just started saw 13541 weekly domestic flights this was possibly the highest ever capacity witnessed in the domestic market then kingfisher started truncating its flight schedule the summer of 2012 saw about 13000 weekly flights with kingfisher accounting for 2500 of them this number kept falling till the airline shut down on september 30 2012 as a result last winter saw just 10935 weekly domestic flights domestic air travel is showing a declining trend while international travel to and from india has been rising constantly by 11 we will see airline use more capacity on foreign routes the domestic capacity will now rise and possibly fares will fall only when the two new tata airlines are launched said a senior officialweekly