End travel restrictions
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‘Rise in flight rates due to demand, few seats’
KUWAIT CITY, Oct 21: Despite the Cabinet’s decision to raise the capacity of incoming passengers to Kuwait International Airport to 10,000 per day, the air transportation market is still witnessing a steady rise in flight ticket prices, which have reached record limits due to limited number of seats and increased demand to return to the country, reports Al-Qabas daily.
Head of the Union of Travel and Tourism Offices Mohammad Al- Mutairi explained that the prices of tickets for those coming from India, the UAE and the Philippines are high. The ticket rates have increased to 500 percent due to the decisions related to limited number of seats per day, without raising the capacity. The prices of tickets for passengers from Dubai, India and the Philippines range between KD 300 and KD 400. Considering that those coming from India and the Philippines are mostly domestic workers, the citizens who are waiting for the arrival of these workers end up being burdened.
Al-Mutairi called for the abolition of travel restrictions, saying, “It is unfortunate that we were the first to implement these restrictions, and we will be the last to lift them”. He indicated that there are approximately 2,000 seats per day that are not used by some airlines due to which they must be redirected to India and the UAE immediately. Al-Mutairi highlighted his demand to open the airport with full operational capacity, similar to neighboring countries, in line with the governmental promises of doing so when the vaccination rate reaches 80 percent.
He said, “The need for the air transportation market is higher and greater than the current situation due to several reasons, including the desire of tens of thousands of residents to return to the country following a eight month ban. The solution is to reopen the skies but by taking health measures”. Al-Mutairi stated that many countries of the world have slowly resumed air traffic to the normal rates, and that these countries’ vaccination rates are lower or equal to the vaccination rate in Kuwait, which has the highest vaccination rate in the world.
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