In order to cater to the increased passenger traffic ahead of the Cricket World Cup Finale on Sunday, Indian Railways operated seven special trains to Ahmedabad from Mumbai and Delhi on Saturday.

Five special trains from Mumbai and two special trains from Delhi are being operated to allow more people to travel to Ahmedabad for the match,” a railway official said.

“At least 7,000 passengers had made bookings until 6pm on Saturday,” he said adding, that four out of the total seven trains were fully booked by early evening.

The Indian Railways opened bookings for these special trains on Saturday morning and said that they were looking to add a few more special trains even on Sunday morning. “The fast filling trains may lead to additional services from Mumbai on Sunday morning too,” the official said.

He said that the AC coaches were fully booked by the afternoon where as over 600 Sleeper Class berths were available. “However, they too were all booked by 5pm,” he said.

The need for IR to operate additional trains is a result of high airfares because of which many travellers were forced to book train tickets for their travel.

As per data sourced from travel portal ixigo, one way airfares when booked a week in advance were around 20,000 and when booked 15 to 45 days in advance were around 14,000.

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As per ixigo, average one way airfares between Delhi and Ahmedabad if booked 0-7 days in advance was 14,000, between Mumbai- Ahmedabad was around Rs. 8000, Kolkata- Ahmedabad was around 20, 000 and Goa was around Rs. 11000 and from Lucknow was around Rs. 14,000. The fares for the same destinations if booked 15-45 days in advance are around Rs. 9,000 from Delhi, around Rs.14,000 from Kolkata and Lucknow, around Rs.7,000 from Goa and around Rs. 5,500 from Mumbai.

Cleartrip said that they witnessed around 32% increase in air bookings to Ahmedabad for this weekend.

“The fares are currently averaging at around 9200, reflecting a 2.2x spike,” Gaurav Patwari, vice president – Air Category, for Cleartrip said.

On the contrary, train travel on Saturday had special fares. A berth in the Sleeper Class was Rs. 620 and an 1AC class train fare was Rs. 3,490.

Officials said that all these trains will have their return travel starting from Sunday evening going up to Monday morning.