It is all very well for a parliamentary committee to indict India’s private airlines for arbitrary practices but it is the government itself that gave the okay for deregulation in the aviation sector. It began this process in 1986 and by 1994 the cluster of private carriers had grown exponentially and was carrying nine times the passenger load into the new ‘open skies’ era.
With the changing rules, dynamic pricing or what the industry calls flexible pricing or cleverly, surge strategy, came to stay. Shorn of its verbal finery it is just plain price gouging. Spikes as high as 400 percent in festive periods or school holidays or even acts of force majeure (in August fares to Chandigarh and Amritsar rose dramatically because of the Dera violence as did the fares to Mumbai because of Ganesh Chaturthi and the North East because of floods.) The DGCA had to step in on two occasions to order the airlines to back off. Time-based pricing is an accepted practice.
That airlines have no sense of decency and would even exploit a calamity has been known for years so floods, quakes, riots, ash clouds, drought, war, these are often good news for airline bean counters.
The Indian MPs sound good to the public like they care but the airlines are not duty bound to listen and would only do so by way of insincere promise to stay in the good books of the Ministry of Civil Aviation. A month after Minister of State Mahesh Sharma had announced that fares would soon be capped his boss, Civil Aviation Minister Ashok Ganapathi Raju has backed off any such move. Even in the ministry, they’re not on the same page.
06/01/18 Bikram Vohra/First Post
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With the changing rules, dynamic pricing or what the industry calls flexible pricing or cleverly, surge strategy, came to stay. Shorn of its verbal finery it is just plain price gouging. Spikes as high as 400 percent in festive periods or school holidays or even acts of force majeure (in August fares to Chandigarh and Amritsar rose dramatically because of the Dera violence as did the fares to Mumbai because of Ganesh Chaturthi and the North East because of floods.) The DGCA had to step in on two occasions to order the airlines to back off. Time-based pricing is an accepted practice.
That airlines have no sense of decency and would even exploit a calamity has been known for years so floods, quakes, riots, ash clouds, drought, war, these are often good news for airline bean counters.
The Indian MPs sound good to the public like they care but the airlines are not duty bound to listen and would only do so by way of insincere promise to stay in the good books of the Ministry of Civil Aviation. A month after Minister of State Mahesh Sharma had announced that fares would soon be capped his boss, Civil Aviation Minister Ashok Ganapathi Raju has backed off any such move. Even in the ministry, they’re not on the same page.
06/01/18 Bikram Vohra/First Post
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