Planning to fly to Goa for V-Day? It’s too costly!

MUMBAI: If Goa is your idea of a romantic destination, this Valentine’s Day you will be left heartbroken if you live in Mumbai. Three factors have come together and the triangle has made fares on flights from Mumbai to Goa ridiculously expensive.
It will be cheaper for Mumbaikars to fly to Colombo or Dubai instead.
Valentine’s Day falls on Thursday, which is close to a weekend.That day, no flights will depart or land into Mumbai between 11am and 5pm as the airport will be shut for runway maintenance. Goa airport is shut for flights between 8.30am and 12.30pm daily to allow its operator, Indian Navy, carry out training sorties. Which is probably why, on Saturday, the cheapest fare for two return tickets on the Mumbai-Goa route for travel on February 14 and return on February 16/17 began at Rs30,000. But it offered an extremely inconvenient 1am departure from Mumbai. The cheapest fare for a flight with better timing began at a whopping Rs43,000, for a5am departure from Mumbai (not too convenient, but the best morning option), with the return flight being at 6.40am from Goa.
Next week, as D-day closes in, fares will only skyrocket. Compare that to a DubaiGoa flight (via Bangalore), where the cheapest return fare for two was Rs42,000. Similarly, Colombo-Goa return fare was Rs41,500.
Couples’ Delhi-Goa return fares began at Rs26,500 and went up to Rs30,000 for convenient flight times.
John Nair of Cox and Kings said, “We have seen a 25% increase in demand for Valentine vacations to Goa. This led to an increase in fares by 15-20%.’’