new delhi/ mumbai, Jan. 10 -- India's domestic airfares slid to a four-year low in the October-December quarter, an unusual outcome for a seasonally strong period, as passenger traffic slowed through the year and demand weakened on non-metro routes. Analysts also pointed to IndiGo's wave of cancellations in December as a likely added cause. According to analysts at Elara Capital, airfares slipped about 1% in the October-December period from Rs.5,485 last year to Rs.5,436 in 2025, even as domestic air travel growth slowed sharply to 3% growth in Q3FY26 compared to the same period in FY25, from 9% in Q3FY25 compared to Q3FY24. According to Gagan Dixit, aviation, chemicals, oil & gas analyst at Elara Capital, this happened because 300 routes (of 400), which carry about a fifth of India's air traffic, saw a 6% decline in fares in the quarter. "This hints at demand-side concerns in the current high airfare environment," Dixit wrote in a report dated 8 January. "The decline in airfare prices has been seen in non-metro cities more, while prices remained largely flat in the metro cities." Alongside, data from the aviation regulator - Directorate General of Civil Aviation - showed domestic air traffic declining across successive quarters in 2025, from 43.2 million in January-March, to 42 million in April-June and 38.2 million in the July-September period. Data for October-December is yet to be released by DGCA. The drop in fares came despite the four major airlines-IndiGo, Tata-backed Air India group, Akasa Air and SpiceJet-operating a combined 550 aircraft during the quarter, 6% higher than the 518 aircraft operated a year ago. Dixit noted that the industry's passenger load factor (PLF) of 87% remained flat year-on-year, indicating slower demand growth. Analysts attribute the sharper decline in non-metro airfares to passenger cancellations triggered by IndiGo's operational disruption in December. According to Shobit Singhal, associate director at Anand Rathi Institutional Equities, the decline in non-metro fares may be linked to passengers shifting to alternative modes of transport amid uncertainty caused by flight disruptions. Jinesh Joshi, aviation analyst at PL Capital, a Mumbai-based financial services group, said the flight cancellations by IndiGo - which controls around 60-65% of the domestic market - created a supply crunch, which would typically have pushed fares higher, but "this impact was felt mainly on metro and busy routes where travel is often unavoidable due to corporate or other essential reasons". "On non-metro routes, which are largely driven by leisure travel, passengers tend to cancel or postpone trips more easily during disruptions, leading to weaker demand and softer fares," he said. Joshi added that IndiGo had revised its Q3 passenger revenue per available seat km (PRASK) guidance to a mid-single-digit percentage decline, indicating fare softness on select routes. PRASK measures how much money an airline earns for every seat flown per km, regardless of whether it is sold. E-mails sent to IndiGo, Air India, SpiceJet and Akasa remained unanswered till press time. In early December last year, a combination of pilot shortages and planning gaps in implementing the second and final phase of flight duty time limitations (FDTL) norms led to more than 4,500 flight cancellations by IndiGo-its worst operational stretch since listing in 2015....