No ‘collective’ decision to hike fares: Airlines

New Delhi: The domestic airline industry has denied that the recent decision to raise fares was taken collectively.
In response to a communication from the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) on why the industry had acted as a “cartel” and raised fares, various airlines have given different explanations including pointing out that they follow a dynamic pricing policy. Some carriers have also pointed out that they have installed sophisticated software systems to do proper passenger demand analysis while determining fare movement.

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Aero India 2009: Airshow News
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The airlines were responding to a DGCA communication sent earlier this week wanting to know why all the airlines had raised fares simultaneously in the second week of this month.
‘no rationale’ “The DGCA was not aware of the reasons for this simultaneous hike, specifically at a time when the ATF prices, effective February 1, are at the level that they were in 2005. As such, the DGCA felt that there appeared to be no rationale for increasing the airfares,” the communication said.
Sources added that on the issue of displaying ‘one composite fare’ on their Web sites, airlines have said that they were working towards achieving this. The airlines have also emphasised that they were working towards getting greater transparency in their pricing.
14/02/09 Ashwini Phadnis/Business Line

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Categories: Indian Aviation- In General Feb 2009