PUNE: Several international travellers from the city are skirting Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport in Mumbai and opting for hassle-free cheaper transit points like Delhi, Hyderabad, Bengaluru and Chennai to fly abroad.Travel companies stressed that this was the newest travel trend in Pune. Reason: many travellers find it distressing to travel to Mumbai to board an international flight because of the three- to four-hour road journey fraught with traffic jams, pollution and lags. Travel companies claimed that many Puneites were opting for costlier international flight connections in some cases to skip travelling to Mumbai. A firm said about 1,000 of its clients opted against flying abroad via Mumbai this year.Mehboob Shaikh, the treasurer of Travel Agents’ Association and the director of Travel Elect Private Limited, told TOI that close to 25% of his clients travelling to international destinations prefer to skirt Mumbai. “Many people are flying from Pune to places like Hyderabad, Bengaluru and Delhi to catch international flights. Travelling to Mumbai at times poses some hurdles, including highway closure and traffic during weekends or festivals. Flying to Delhi, Bengaluru or Hyderabad and then taking flights to Australia , Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and Europe (from Delhi) works out to be cheaper in many cases than driving to Mumbai from Pune and boarding a flight from there,” said Shaikh.He said the Lohegaon airport was unable to provide too many slots to international airlines. But Hyderabad and Bengaluru have a decent number of flights to international destinations.Santosh Gupta of travel agency Shree Vinayak Holidays said a flight from Pune to Chennai and then to Bangkok works out to be cheaper than travelling from Pune to Mumbai and then flying to Bangkok.“A two-way journey via the Mumbai route will cost around Rs20,000 to Rs21,000 in this case, while the Chennai route will cost around Rs15,000 or Rs16,000. This, without the hassle of driving to-and-fro Mumbai,” he said.Gupta said travelling from Pune to Hong Kong via Mumbai would be cheaper than flying there via Delhi. Yet, a number of travellers opt for the latter because of the convenience.“Travelling from Mumbai means losing five to six hours straight: three-and-a-half hours to travel to Mumbai and reaching the airport at least two hours before departure,” he said. At least 25% of his clients travelling internationally are now opting for routes other than Mumbai.Shoba Jose George, director at the city-based travel company The Extramile, said travellers did not want to take a flight from Pune to Mumbai and then to the international destination in their mind. “Airfares on the Pune-Mumbai sector are high and there are limited flights on this route. The Pune-Delhi-Casablanca route worked out cheaper for me recently than the route via Mumbai. It is convenient to take a direct connecting flight to Pune when one finishes a journey and reach the city in an hour to two. Driving from Mumbai to Pune at the end of one’s travel is just too tiring,” she said.Zelam Chaubal, the director of Kesari Tours Private Ltd, said people were not happy either way (opting for the Mumbai route or other transit points) because of multiple checkout and check-in sessions. “Nevertheless, we do see a trend wherein people have begun to travel internationally skirting Mumbai as the transit point and opting for Hyderabad or Delhi because nobody travels for three to four hours just to reach the airport, in most developed cities, ” said Kesari Zelum.

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