DGCA seeks details of airfares amidst complaints of overcharging

The Director General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has asked all domestic airlines to reveal the number of seats sold and revenues generated from their highest fare buckets every month, amidst rising complaints of carriers charging exorbitant fares during festivals and emergency situations.

Airlines have different fare buckets for each flight with a certain number of seats in each fare bucket. As the seats on a flight get sold, fares move to the next higher level.

Airlines follow a demand-based pricing for late stage bookings, depending on the availability of seats. Air fares tend to rise as the flight schedule nears.

"To begin with, we have identified 20 domestic routes for which airlines will have to tell us on a monthly basis two things - number of seats sold in highest fare bucket and its percentage to their total revenue. If we find that a large number of seats are being sold at highest fare level, we will decide our next course of action. Else, no action will be required from our side," reports quoting a senior DGCA official said.

The routes identified are in the busy sectors such as Delhi-Mumbai and flights from other metros such as Chennai, Hyderabad, Kolkata and Bengaluru, as well as North East, Port Blair, Srinagar and Leh.

"We will make public the information given by airlines to us about the number of seats being sold for highest fare bucket. This information will be shared with the public on a monthly basis," the official added.

While the regulator has the option to step in, it does not want to be seen as stopping market forces from deciding fares.

The aviation ministry, based on a DGCA study of fares in the past few years, maintained that airlines are not over charging.

The ministry had also quoted a study last year by the International Air Transport Association - a body of 260 airlines worldwide - that had found a 65-per cent drop in airfares in India in the past decade.

This, according to the ministry, had prompted the government to rethink a proposal to launch a price control exercise.

Replying to questions on the issue in Parliament, civil aviation minister Ashok Gajapathi Raju, however, promised to speak to the airlines to avoid "surge pricing". "The ministry will commence the process of consultations with stakeholders, including airlines, to explore possibilities ... of containing fares," Raju had said.

Passenger organisations have been constantly complaining that airlines charge high fares during crunch situations like the Chennai flood when passengers had to fly to other cities and the Jat agitation, which cut off Jaipur, Chandigarh and Amritsar by road from Delhi.