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Private airlines flayed

A Correspondent

‘Fare hike an onslaught on passengers'

Air fares should remain firm and fixed and should conform to the quality and demand
The current trend led to charging premium on tickets sold on the previous day of travel

Nedumbassery: The IATA Agents Association of India on Friday criticised private airline companies in the country for charging exorbitant fare from passengers and called on the government to restore order in the air travel business in the country.

An official statement by Biji Eapen, national president of the association, termed the fare hike an onslaught on passengers and held that the prices had to remain stable so as to keep parity .

It also maintained the view that barring the ATF variation allowance, air fares should remain firm and fixed and should conform to the quality and demand of the product.

According to the statement, though apex price in air travel trade prohibited arbitrary price hikes in a regulated market like India, the rational for this mechanism must be on the distance factor and not the time of travel. This was because the intermediary stopovers between two destinations could prolong the flying time and the fares could not be proportional to the actual flying hours.

In addition, the current situation also led to charging exorbitant premium on tickets sold on the previous day of travel, even while the tickets booked in advance followed normal prices.

Higher fees

The statement pointed out the case of Delhi-Mumbai sector where there was an eight-fold fare hike —with the prices scaling up from Rs.3,000 last year and touching almost Rs.25,000 this year.

The association also noted that the private airlines in the country owed enormous amounts of money to the Airport Authority of India (AAI) on account of landing fee, parking fee and other charges, and called on the government to keep them on a tight leash.

According to it, the airlines had earlier nullified the agents' commission by flouting the Indian Aircraft Rules and the IATA regulations.

Unfair decisions

They followed a series of unfair and arbitrary decisions like forfeiting ticket stocks, applying penalty on cancellations and bookings, introducing open-ended remuneration packages that could be manoeuvred and the introduction of bank guaranty. He also said the situation could have been avoided had the Union Ministry of Civil Aviations paid attention to the alert signals given by the associations.

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