Why Travelling in India Is Becoming Impossible: The Truth About Trains, Flights and a Broken Promise

Ground Reality · Investigation

You Cannot Get a Train Seat. You Cannot Afford a Flight. And It Is About to Get Worse.

A data-backed look at how India’s two ways of travelling long distance are failing the lower class, squeezing the middle class, and answering to almost no one.

Every Diwali, the same ritual repeats. You open the IRCTC app at 8:59 AM, refresh until your thumb hurts, and watch “WL 112” appear next to a train that was supposed to take you home. Then you check flights, and a one-hour hop costs more than the train ticket several times over. You close both apps and wonder: is it just me?

It is not just you. It is a pattern, it is measurable, and it has been getting worse for five years straight. I went through RTI data, Parliament replies, regulator figures, court-bound petitions and independent datasets to put numbers on what millions of Indians already feel. Where a number is weak or disputed, I say so. Where it is solid, I let it hit as hard as it deserves.

3.39 crore

passengers whose waitlisted tickets never confirmed, FY 2025-26 (RTI)

92,877

people denied a confirmed berth every single day

66.3%

IndiGo’s domestic share, June 2026 (DGCA, a record)

54%

of Diwali flyers surveyed paying 50%+ more than last year

Part 1: The Railway Seat Lottery

3.39 crore Indians were told “sorry, no seat” in a single year

RTI responses obtained by activist Chandra Shekhar Gaur, and reported by multiple outlets including the Daily Pioneer and Business Today, show that more than 3.39 crore passengers could not travel in FY 2025-26 because their waitlisted tickets never got confirmed and were automatically cancelled. That works out to roughly 92,877 people a day, about 64 every minute. Read that again: every minute of every day, 64 Indians who planned a journey and paid for a ticket are told it will not happen.

Passengers whose waitlisted tickets were never confirmed

Crore passengers per financial year (RTI data as reported)

Source: RTI data via Daily Pioneer (10 May 2026) and Business Today (14 May 2026). Figures are as reported by media; the underlying RTI reply was not independently reviewed.

Notice the direction. Not one year of improvement. The number has more than doubled in four years while the government celebrates new trains and new stations on every available stage.

And who gets hit hardest? The poor.

Where the 3.39 crore cancelled journeys came from

Crore passengers, FY 2025-26

Source: Sleeper and 3AC figures from Daily Pioneer reporting of the RTI data; the third bar is simply the remainder of 3.39 crore and is my arithmetic, not a published figure.

Sleeper class, the coach used by migrant workers, students, low-income families and small-town travellers, accounts for nearly half of all failed journeys. The people with the fewest alternatives are the ones the system fails most often.

“Even after 78 years of Independence, getting a confirmed railway ticket should not depend on luck.”
— Chandra Shekhar Gaur, RTI activist, as quoted by the Daily Pioneer

The general coach scene is a humanitarian image, not a transport system

In April 2026, more than 7,000 passengers converged on Surat’s Udhna Junction, with two trains available, according to Hindustan Herald. Security forces had to be deployed. Long-distance migrant-corridor trains typically carry only two to three general compartments. And in February 2025, a crowd crush at New Delhi station killed at least 18 people. These are not “festival rush” anecdotes. They are what happens when demand has no legal, comfortable outlet.

The bot and agent economy. The Railway Ministry says it blocked over 60 billion suspicious bot requests between July and December 2025 (as reported by Business Today; I could not find the primary ministry release, so treat the exact figure with care). Separately, Hindustan Herald reports that a Tatkal sleeper ticket bought through an agent can climb to Rs 1,300-1,350 against a base fare of about Rs 800. When a seat is scarce, someone always learns to sell it.

Fares up twice in six months, seats not up even once

Revision	What changed	Reported effect
1 July 2025	Non-AC Mail/Express +1 paisa/km; AC classes +2 paise/km; ordinary 2nd class beyond 500 km +0.5 paisa/km	Described by the Tribune as the first hike in several years; about Rs 700 crore raised
26 Dec 2025	Ordinary class beyond 215 km +1 paisa/km; Mail/Express non-AC and AC +2 paise/km	About Rs 600 crore expected by 31 March 2026; a 500 km non-AC trip costs about Rs 10 more
From 1 July 2025	Aadhaar-authenticated users only for online Tatkal; OTP verification from 15 July; agents barred in the first 30 minutes	Aimed at bots and touts

Fairness check. Per ticket, these hikes are small. A Rs 10 rise on a 500 km journey will not break anyone. The scandal is not the amount. It is that passengers are asked to pay more every year for a service where, for 92,877 people a day, the product does not exist at all. Fare figures are from press reports (Tribune, Business Today, Deccan Chronicle, Outlook Money); check IRCTC for current rates.

“On time” means something different on paper

Railways told Parliament that Mail/Express punctuality was 77.12% in 2024-25 and about 80% between April and October 2025. The Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee, as cited by The Week, noted overall punctuality had fallen from 90.48% in 2021-22 to 78.67% in 2024-25 (up to August). And “on time” is defined as within 15 minutes, a yardstick the same column says ignores delays along the route.

Now compare that with an independent analysis of 136 long-distance trains between April and October 2026. It is a one-person open-source project using etrain.info running history, not a peer-reviewed study, and it covers one season, so it is indicative, not definitive. Still, the gap is hard to ignore.

Official claims vs what the running data shows

Percent of runs on time (within 15 min of schedule)

Source: Official figures: Lok Sabha reply via News24, The Week. Independent: github.com/abpandey-dev/rail-punctuality (20,461 runs, 11 Apr-7 Oct 2026). Periods and samples differ; compare with caution. The Mail/Express bar shows the upper end of a 45-58% range.

In that dataset, the median delay was 6 minutes but the average was 41, and 18% of runs were over an hour late. The ordinary train is late, the premium train is fine. The people who can pay for Vande Bharat get a railway; the rest get an experience.

Safety: the problem nobody wants to be asked about

The 2023 Balasore collision killed around 300 people. The section did not have Kavach, the indigenous anti-collision system. A CAG report on derailments (2022) found derailments made up about 75% of consequential accidents between 2017-18 and 2020-21 (163 of 217), pointed to track-maintenance failures, and noted that funding for the safety fund, the Rashtriya Rail Sanraksha Kosh, had fallen sharply short of its target. Deccan Herald reported the CAG finding as a 79% fall in funding, while a government source said the audit covered only part of the period.

On Kavach, a BJD MP told the Rajya Sabha in February 2025 that only about 1,445 km had been covered, against a network of over a lakh route kilometres. The government has repeatedly said that accident rates per million train kilometres have fallen (from 0.10 in 2013 to 0.03 in 2022, per a railway spokesperson in 2023). Both statements can be true. A railway can be statistically safer than before and still be dangerously far from where a country spending this much should be.

Data warning. The safety numbers in my sources are mostly from 2023 and early 2025. Rail safety is a fast-moving subject; please check the latest Kavach coverage and the most recent CAG and Commission of Railway Safety reports before quoting any single number.

Part 2: The Sky Is Not the Escape You Were Promised

Two companies, nine out of ten seats

India domestic market share, June 2026

Percent of domestic passengers (DGCA data via Aviation A2Z / Mint)

Source: DGCA June 2026 data, reported by Aviation A2Z (22 July 2026). IndiGo was at 64.5% in June 2025; Air India Group at 27.1%.

Business Today puts IndiGo and Air India at more than 90% of the market by seats. When two players hold that much, they do not need to collude to raise prices. They only need to cut capacity, and that is exactly what the capacity data shows.

December 2025: the day one airline broke the country

In early December 2025, IndiGo, India’s biggest airline, collapsed operationally after new pilot rest rules (Flight Duty Time Limitations) took full effect. Cancellations peaked at about 1,600 flights on 5 December. By 12 December roughly 4,500 flights had been cancelled and more than 9-10 lakh passengers were affected, according to Wikipedia’s summary of DGCA and press data. On-time performance fell from 84.1% in October to 8.5% on 4 December.

IndiGo flights cancelled per day, December 2025

Approximate daily cancellations (3 to 9 December)

Source: Daily table in Wikipedia’s “2025 IndiGo scheduling crisis”, compiled from DGCA and press reports. The 3 Dec value is listed as 200+. Totals vary by outlet (2,000 to 4,500).

DGCA’s inquiry blamed over-optimisation of operations and weak regulatory preparedness. The Civil Aviation Minister blamed poor crew-roster management. The airline itself admitted “misjudgement and planning gaps.” Everyone found a reason. Nobody found the consequence.

The penalty. DGCA fined IndiGo Rs 22.2 crore, the highest it has ever levied. That is 0.31% of the airline’s FY2025 annual profit, according to Aerospace Global News. Over nine lakh passengers were disrupted. The company lost far more in market value in a week than it paid in fine.

The government did step in with fare caps (for example, Rs 15,000 for journeys between 1,000 and 1,500 km, as reported by Reuters via Al Jazeera). Those caps, per Wikipedia, stayed until 23 March 2026. Then they were gone.

Diwali 2026: the festival tax

Route (travel 6-8 Nov 2026)	Reported return fare	Airline cited
Delhi - Hyderabad	about Rs 18,000	Air India
Delhi - Kolkata	about Rs 17,000	(Business Today fare check)
Delhi - Ahmedabad	about Rs 17,000	(Business Today fare check)
Delhi - Bengaluru	about Rs 16,000	(Business Today fare check)
Delhi - Mumbai	about Rs 13,000	IndiGo

These are Business Today’s fare checks from September, for dates around Diwali (8 November). A LocalCircles survey of nearly 20,000 respondents across 277 districts, reported by ThePrint on 16 October, found 54% of air travellers going home for Diwali were paying more than 50% extra compared with 2025. It is a self-selected online survey, so it shows sentiment and not a statistically exact national figure, but the direction matches the capacity data.

Domestic seat capacity, year on year

Percent change in scheduled seats (OAG data via Business Today / BT Bazaar)

Source: OAG figures as reported by Business Today (14 Sep 2026) and BT Bazaar (19 Oct 2026). Bars show the size of each cut. IndiGo October was reported as only 0.2% lower, and Akasa grew 35.6%.

Fewer seats, higher fuel costs (ATF reportedly up about 13% this month), and a government that has told us it will not cap festive fares. The Civil Aviation Minister said the ministry has asked airlines to keep fares reasonable and that sharp ATF swings make affordability hard. A request is not a rule.

The Supreme Court angle. In a PIL by activist S. Laxminarayanan, the Centre told the Supreme Court that airfare rules under the Bharatiya Vayuyan Adhiniyam, 2024 are finalised and will be published within two weeks. The next hearing is on 16 November. The court had already stressed in July the need to rationalise fares. Watch whether the rules actually limit anything or only describe what is already happening.

Part 3: How This Squeezes Two Classes From Opposite Ends

The lower class has one real option: the train. When the sleeper and general coach fail, there is no Plan B. A migrant worker cannot absorb an agent-inflated Tatkal price or a festival-week airfare. So he stands in the vestibule, or he does not go home. The 1.68 crore cancelled sleeper journeys are not a statistic. They are journeys home that never happened.

The middle class is told to “just take a flight.” But when the train is waitlisted and late, a flight stops being a luxury and becomes the only dependable way to keep a deadline, and that is exactly when airlines price it highest. The result is a forced upgrade at festival-peak prices. The middle class does not choose to fly. It is pushed there, and charged for the push.

And aspiration, the great Indian promise that a Hawai chappal wearer can fly, runs into a market where two companies control nearly all the seats and prices follow demand with almost no ceiling.

Part 4: Is It Going to Get Worse? What the Trend Says

Nobody can predict the future, so let me separate fact from forecast. The facts: waitlist failures have risen five years in a row; domestic seat capacity is down about 5.6% year on year; Air India is shrinking while IndiGo grows to a record share; fuel costs are rising; there is no festive fare cap; and fares on trains have been revised twice in six months. My forecast, and it is an opinion, is that without new capacity (coaches, trains, planes, competitors) these curves keep bending the same way. Air India says it plans to restore capacity from September 2026, and that is the one real counter-signal to watch.

What the Government Says (Because You Deserve Both Sides)

The Ministry of Railways says it produced a record 4,838 general and non-AC coaches in the previous year and ran a record 43,000 special train trips, including more than 12,000 summer specials. The Railway Minister told Parliament in 2024 that 10,000 non-AC coaches were planned. Mail/Express punctuality is officially around 77-80%. Accident rates per million train kilometres have reportedly come down. Aviation has seen record passenger numbers, and the DGCA did impose its biggest-ever fine. These are real achievements and I am not pretending otherwise.

But a record production number means nothing to the person at position WL 112. And a record fine means nothing to the passenger who was stranded at the airport. Measuring effort is not the same as measuring outcome, and the outcome, 3.39 crore failed journeys, is the one Indians actually live.

What Needs to Change

1. Publish the real numbers. Release waitlist-to-confirmation data by train, class and route every quarter, and define punctuality at every major station, not just at arrival within 15 minutes.
2. Build capacity, not announcements. More general and sleeper coaches on the busiest migrant corridors, with a public timeline.
3. Cap festival airfares on a fixed formula, as was done in December 2025, instead of asking airlines to be reasonable.
4. Put real teeth in aviation penalties. A fine of 0.31% of annual profit teaches nobody anything. Automatic, rule-based compensation for passengers should not need a crisis to trigger it.
5. Treat competition as a safety issue. A market where two airlines hold about 90% of seats cannot absorb a single failure.
6. Fund safety first and finish Kavach on the busiest routes on a dated, public schedule.

What you can do right now

Ask for numbers: file RTI applications on your own route, as Mr Gaur did. Complain through the official channels (Rail Madad for railways, AirSewa for airlines) so grievances become records. Share this post with someone who has just been told “WL 112.” Public pressure works when it is specific, repeated, and backed by data.

How Reliable Are These Numbers? Read This Before You Quote Me

The 3.39 crore figure comes from RTI replies reported by several outlets; I could not view the original reply. The 60 billion bot-request number and the “25% waitlist cap” also appear in a single outlet each, without a primary government source, so I used the bot figure with a caveat and left the cap out. The independent punctuality study is a one-person project with a limited sample. The LocalCircles survey is self-selected. The 70% fare rise on “some routes” was reported without naming routes, so I did not use it as a headline. Safety data is mostly 2023-2025. Please verify before sharing as fact, and correct me in the comments if you find newer data.

Sources

Last updated 21 October 2026. This article is analysis and opinion built on published reports and public data; it is not legal or financial advice.