Unless you are allergic like me to paying super-duper high business class prices for economy seating to travel around India in the next 2-3 months, your options are fast getting limited to travel around in the festive season in India. Like I mentioned in this post a few days back, airlines have predictably decided to add to their revenues by jacking up ticket prices over the next few months.

I was not surprised but slightly disgusted at double fares in the same fare classes which got inflated over a week or so. October to December is peak travel time in India, what with all the festivals for everyone bunching up, along with a longish wedding season coming up too!

Here is how you can still get a comparatively (sic!) cheaper ticket if you know where you want to go and act fast:

1. Jet Airways sale: Jet Airways has put out some 100,000 seats on sale, which are available uptil October 9, 2011 for travel within India. While the number seems to be a gimmick and may or may not be true, the discount sure is. Tickets are available to book via jetairways.com only, and the discount is for round trip bookings in economy as well as business class.
2. Kingfisher sale: Maybe, just maybe, to counter Jet Airways, Kingfisher started its own sale, but it is not advertising the same very much. So, if you book a trip on the Kingfisher airlines website, flykingfisher.com, you will see the round trip discounts being offered. The good part is, this offer is also being sourced via some online portals. Like I recently booked a BOM-DEL-BOM ticket on Kingfisher using this offer, but booked it via cleartrip.com. So, you should scour there also. There are no time limitations here as of today!
3. Cleartrip.com: For me, Cleartrip.com is clearly working out better than some of the other online travel booking sites. I have found flights on times I wanted and prices I was willing to pay, while most of the other travel websites were showing higher fares on the same flights. And if you don’t get what you want the first time around, perhaps look again a few hours later and something would have come onstream.
4. Air India 15 day pass: Air India came up with a fly-unlimited offer recently and I did not discuss it here because I was under the impression that this offer was going offline by 15 Sep, 2011. However, I now notice that the ‘Silver Pass’ and the ‘Platinum Pass’ offer has been extended for travel till 15 January 2012. Priced at INR 35K for Economy (all inclusive) and INR 75K for Executive (all inclusive), this is one of the best offers out there if you have a lot of festive travel planned out in a fortnight. Take note, that this is valid for 15 consecutive days only. More details of the offer here.

Also, almost every online travel website such as Ezeego1.com, Makemytrip.com, Goibibo.com and the others are running some or the other promotional offers with some cashbacks, or free flight coupons on particular airlines coming through. So, make sure you check through the airlines website, or a couple of the travel websites at least before you go ahead and book your tickets.

If you know of any more such promos or want me to discuss any particular promo in detail, feel free to drop me a comment!