New Delhi: The civil aviation ministry will soon come out with a blueprint seeking to arm the directorate general of civil aviation (DGCA) with powers to regulate air fares which hit the roof during the last festival season.
The blueprint, which will be ready in a month, mainly looks at transforming DGCA into a powerful regulatory body called Civil Aviation Authority (CAA).
"The blueprint for the CAA should be ready in a month's time and we are planning to include regulation of airfares in it. We also plan to have an environment regulation and one for passenger grievances, for which an ombudsman may be brought in," a senior official from the civil aviation ministry said.
Airfare regulation is needed because consumers have the right to know what ticket pricing is based on and the regulator should be aware of the intricacies involved in the formulae used to calculate airfares, said another official in the ministry who is drafting the blueprint.
"When you replace an old authority with a new one, there has to be more to it apart from the change in sign board. It should be of more significance for consumers," the official added. Airfares shot up drastically, by about 200% on a few sectors, post-Diwali, forcing DGCA to issue directions on November 19, 2010 to airlines to furnish a copy of established route-wise tariff across their networks in various fare categories.
14/03/11 Anindya Upadhyay/Economic Times
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