New Delhi, Nov. 7 -- Best of the Week is a weekly newsletter by Siddharth Sharma/Shravani Sinha. Subscribe to Mint's newsletters to get them directly in your inbox.

"Don't travel by air," the Supreme Court said on Monday, declining an urgent hearing on a petition claiming airfares had jumped 700% before Diwali. The actual rise is smaller. But the bigger story may be this. Indians are flying less than they have in years.

Picture it this way. Imagine 100 passengers flew domestically in 2019. In May this year, 126.6 did. By July, that had crashed to 101.1, and September managed only 102.9. Not a dip. A slide. Those are levels worse than three years ago, wiping out the gains of 2023 to mid-2025. Traffic has fallen year-on-year in 10 of the ...