“Airlines hiking fares even up to 300 per cent on some routes is extremely unfair,” Reddy who took the lead to form the APAI in Chennai in 1990, as a non-profit organisation totally dedicated to the welfare of the air passengers, told Deccan Herald here.
“We have been demanding that the Government constitute an Aviation Regulatory Authority of India that can look into the entire gamut of issues affecting the aviation sector; we have been after the Union Civil Aviation Minister with this plea for the last four years, but he is not willing to look into it,” Reddy rued.
Coming down on the private airlines, jacking up fares arbitrarily by taking advantage of a demand-supply crunch on certain routes, Reddy argued that, “If there is a regulatory authority, you can’t hike fares as you like”.
The time has come for setting up such an authority, the APAI chief said and appealed to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to quickly take steps in that direction.
Such a regulatory authority will deal with all issues relating to the Indian civil aviation sector, be it passenger fares, airport tax, flight schedules, user development fee and the like, Reddy emphasised.
Tracing the latest standoff between the private airlines and the Government on this issue of the former taking advantage of the “boom in air travel in India”, Reddy, however, added a caveat saying, “but this (latest hikes) is exploitation”. Unless there was a regulatory authority independent of the Civil Aviation ministry, nothing could be done to curb such practices, he pointed out.
Reddy felt that all the private airlines involved “are over-priced now and they have cartelised.” ”What else is it but cartelisation when all increase fares?” he posed and charged that their attitude is, “we change the fares as we like and let us see where the passengers will go.”
Price band
The APAI is not happy either with the Director General of Civil Aviation (DGCA)’s latest move asking the airlines to give a price-band. “Price ranges do not work,” countered Reddy. “Can people in the newspaper industry sell a paper for Rs 2 when the sun shines and charge the reader Rs 8 on rainy days?” he asked. So, nothing could be regulated with a ‘price band like this’, he added.
A spokesman for a national carrier, when contacted by Deccan Herald, declined to comment on the ongoing controversy over the virtual price war in the private airlines sector.”It is not proper for us to comment on somebody else’s practices. There is a DGCA that is monitoring the situation,” he said.
The pricing mechanism
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