AIR tickets for domestic and international tourist destinations have become scarce since the middle of this month due to the ongoing rush of holidaymakers. The New Year, Christmas and school vacations coupled with extended government holidays in patches have prompted people to take aerial routes to holiday in tourist destinations with their near and dear ones.
Different airlines are happily counting the windfall profits claiming that holidaymakers nowadays prefer travelling by air instead of roads to avoid hassles and save time.
The state-run Biman Bangladesh Airlines and three private carriers — US-Bangla Airlines, Novo Air and Regent Airways — said 90 percent tickets to Cox’s Bazar, Sylhet, Chattogram and Barishal routes till the second week of January 2019 have already been booked or sold out. Tickets to popular international destinations — Thailand, Malaysia, India, Singapore and London — have also been booked or sold out till the middle of January. The airlines officials also said ticket prices on those routes for the next 25 days has almost doubled due to the high demand.
For tourism, December to January is considered the peak time, a global phenomenon when the demand for air tickets reaches its zenith due to Christmas and New Year celebrations. This is also the time for school vacations. Improvement in people’s financial conditions as well as competitive and reasonable prices of air tickets has considerably boosted international and, in particular, domestic air traffic.
Financial ability improvements mean that almost 6.3 million people can now afford to make at one trip abroad every year. While a lot of these are likely to be economic migrants it is a significant number for Bangladesh as it also means that now a lot of families have the purchasing power to make at least one trip abroad per annum.
It also indicates that CAAB (Civil Aviation Authority of Bangladesh) must make long term plans to ensure that the future air travels of our citizens can occur in a hassle free manner. That means that they must build new airports which are future proof and can handle the logistics needed to ensure that 20-30 million passengers can safely fly every year in the not too distant future. Therefore it must overcome these challenges and not operate in an ad hoc basis to ensure the continuity of flights for all.
