At first flight, the offerings of the passenger charter offers a fresh wind beneath the wings of Indian aviation. My goodness, the government cares. But come a little closer and it is open to a not so buoyant scrutiny.
Before we get into the time window, what must be addressed is the fact that the non-refundable tickets are also the cheapest. Airlines can happily navigate this order by upping the rates, which they all do arbitrarily anyway under the canopy of yield whether it is seasonal, festive-oriented or natural tragedy. So the passenger will be the loser.
On that canvas, the deal to only give this concession to those who cancel inside 24 hours of booking a seat and have bought that ticket within 96 hours of estimated time of departure makes for cold comfort.
The airlines must be heaving a collective sigh of relief at this cosmetic courtesy because very few people book so late in the day and if they do succeed in ticking that four-day box, they are mostly the more affluent executives travelling on corporate work or business.
The large majority who book for families go as far back as 320 days with a mean time of 90 days before departure. According to an article in Forbes, 70 days is a good time for a deal while aviation website Cheapair puts it at 54 days.
There was a time not so long ago when booking closer to the flight got you the cheapest ticket and you could get red-eye flight and standby tickets. Those concepts are now fossilised. Then again, a very small number cancel within 24 hours and are more likely to make a change closer to a flight because of an emergency, good or bad or a change in plan necessitated by some unexpected development.
If the new command allows for the final 72 hours run-up to take off to be a no go, what’s the point of this break? Nobody wishes to cancel deliberately and no one can control or second guess negative situations. Consequently, after the initial excitement you notice that there isn’t much to cheer about in this announcement which is still open to ratification by the public.
22/05/18 Bikram Vohra/First Post
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Before we get into the time window, what must be addressed is the fact that the non-refundable tickets are also the cheapest. Airlines can happily navigate this order by upping the rates, which they all do arbitrarily anyway under the canopy of yield whether it is seasonal, festive-oriented or natural tragedy. So the passenger will be the loser.
On that canvas, the deal to only give this concession to those who cancel inside 24 hours of booking a seat and have bought that ticket within 96 hours of estimated time of departure makes for cold comfort.
The airlines must be heaving a collective sigh of relief at this cosmetic courtesy because very few people book so late in the day and if they do succeed in ticking that four-day box, they are mostly the more affluent executives travelling on corporate work or business.
The large majority who book for families go as far back as 320 days with a mean time of 90 days before departure. According to an article in Forbes, 70 days is a good time for a deal while aviation website Cheapair puts it at 54 days.
There was a time not so long ago when booking closer to the flight got you the cheapest ticket and you could get red-eye flight and standby tickets. Those concepts are now fossilised. Then again, a very small number cancel within 24 hours and are more likely to make a change closer to a flight because of an emergency, good or bad or a change in plan necessitated by some unexpected development.
If the new command allows for the final 72 hours run-up to take off to be a no go, what’s the point of this break? Nobody wishes to cancel deliberately and no one can control or second guess negative situations. Consequently, after the initial excitement you notice that there isn’t much to cheer about in this announcement which is still open to ratification by the public.
22/05/18 Bikram Vohra/First Post
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