Airfares fall after govt cracks whip
Average fares have fallen significantly in the past 24 hours following warnings given by the government to airlines, a top office-bearer of the Travel Agents Association of India (TAAI) has claimed. Nevertheless, there seems to be resentment building up among private airlines over the government’s efforts, even as the DGCA on Saturday sent a tough message to three low cost carriers — on the issue of high airfares — at a meeting on Saturday. Even as civil aviation minister Praful Patel continued to turn the heat on airlines by saying in Mumbai on Saturday that corrective action on airfares would be ensured by the government within a week, television reports cited Kingfisher Airlines owner Vijay Mallya as saying that air-fares, globally, are determined by demand and supply and that he could not fathom why there was such a controversy over air-fares. Kingfisher has been advocating lower sales tax on aviation turbine fuel, arguing that the airlines will pass on these benefits to the consumer.
“Sure, within a week you will find corrective action ... the regulator is not helpless ... I am sure they can and they will (act) ... It is not that we are not seeing it. The situation is being monitored,” civil aviation minister Praful Patel was quoted by news agencies as saying in Mumbai on Saturday.
TAAI president Rajji Rai told this newspaper that average last-minute one-way fares to Mumbai (fares booked on the day of travel or a day prior), for instance, had come hurtling down from an average of `16,000 on the Delhi-Mumbai sector on Friday to about `6,000 to 7,000 on Saturday.
However, while tickets priced at `6,000—`7,000 are available very near the date and time of travel, some of the tickets on this sector, for instance, continue to be available for as much as `17,000.
“Airlines, which suffered huge losses during the recession had been trying to make up for it by charging huge fares from passengers in order to maximise profits in this travel season,” Mr Rai said. At a meeting on Saturday, the DGCA on Saturday gave a stern message to three low cost carriers, asking them to fall in line with the government’s directives and not charge exorbitant and unreasonable fares from passengers.
On Saturday, representatives of three low cost carriers—SpiceJet, Go Air and IndiGo met director general of civil aviation E.K. Bharat Bhushan and were conveyed a tough message from the Government that exorbitant fares should not be charged at any cost.
A similar tough message will be conveyed to representatives of full-service carriers — Air India, Jet Airways and Kingfisher on Monday at a separate meeting. “The whole purpose is to ensure that there is some reasonableness about the fares. We have told them we want some predictability and fairness in the fares they charge, which we are trying to enforce,” Mr Bharat Bhushan said.
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