Most inexpensive international airlines
A report by a travel planning site that suggests Asian and Indian airlines to be dominating the list of the most inexpensive international air carriers, has positioned two Indian carriers in the top five.
Low-cost carriers IndiGo and Air India Express have been ranked among the top five cheapest airlines in the world in providing international connectivity.
At the second place is Air India Express, the wholly-owned subsidiary of state-run carrier Air India while budget carrier IndiGo is placed at fifth position in a Global Flight Pricing Report prepared by Melbourne based Rome2rio – a multimodal travel planning site.
Released this month, the report has two other Indian carriers- Jet Airways and Air India, featured in the list at the 12th and 13th positions respectively.
The report compared 200 major global airlines by the average price per kilometre (km). At the top of the list is Air Asia X with an average of USD 0.07 per km.
Air India Express, mostly connecting Gulf countries and Singapore, has an average cost of USD 0.08 per km; while IndiGo, connecting Indian cities with Gulf countries besides Bangkok, Colombo and Kathmandu has an average of USD 0.10 per km.
The data was analysed by taking into account the economy class airfares displayed by Rome2rio during the first two months of this year, totalling some 1.5 million price points.
The report had Asian and Indian carriers dominating the top 25, with four out of the top five cheapest airlines being Asian. Indonesia AirAsia and the Primera Air are the other two to have been put in the top five.
Etihad, Ryanair, Qantas, Wow Air and Virgin Australia were among the top ten affordable airlines. There were no airlines from the US or the UK in top 10.
As per the report, although airfares follow certain trends based on the duration of flights etc, there are more factors governing the prices. The type of aircraft flown, routes flown, local salary and fuel costs, ancillary revenue and airport landing fees all impact airfares.
