Airlines told to make fare charts more transparent

“The DGCA’s newly constituted Tariff Analysis Unit is monitoring the route-wise, date-wise and fare category-wise tariff displayed by the airlines,” sources in the regulatory body said.
Members of the Federation of Indian Airlines ( FIA) — Air India, GoAir, IndiGo, Jet Airways, JetLite, Kingfisher Airlines, Paramount Airways and Spice Jet — put up fare-related information on their websites on Tuesday, an FIA statement said.

The release added that the airlines would furnish copies of the rates for all routes across their networks to the DGCA and also provide the same information on their websites on the first day of every month.

But with confusion still persisting on route-wise fares on each slab, the DGCA has asked the airlines to provide simplified information so that a passenger can easily understand what level of fare he or she would pay for flying on a particular day and time.

The sources said information regarding the advance purchase fares, return fares and the several fare buckets were “not consumer-friendly”.

An airline website on Wednesday showed 11 different fare levels for a particular day of March next year, while another showed nine. One website even carried a disclaimer that fare charts were subject to change without prior notice.