Airlines may soon be ranked on basis of customer feedback

In a first, India may soon rank its airlines based on the quality of services they provide to flyers. The quality could be determined by the ratio of passengers flown by any airline and the number of complaints received against it. Also, opting for Digi-Yatra through a facial recognitionbased biometric boarding process is set to get simpler with the government exploring if the photo of the flyer can be sent by phone at the time of initial registration.

Aviation minister Suresh Prabhu, while launching ‘Air-Sewa 2.0’, an upgraded version of the ministry’s consumer portal — that promises to make registration of grievances and their redressal faster — on Monday, said the “categorisation” of airlines can be done based on ranking parameters determined by the Quality Council of India. “Accordingly, customer feedback received on AirSewa can be used for ranking,” he added.

With passengers choosing carriers that are perceived to be more user-friendly, airlines ranked lower will have to work on improving their ranking. That way, the overall quality of service will improve, Prabhu said.


Prabhu has been proactive on social media to solve consumer grievances. His deputy in the ministry, Jayant Sinha, said, “Given the volume of complaints, we needed a systematic process for registering grievances and redressing them. This is why AirSewa was launched and now upgraded.”

The next version of the portal, ‘AirSewa 3.0’, Sinha said, will be launched in a couple of months. It will allow passengers to register for Digi-Yatra, which offers a paperless boarding process for domestic trips (international flyers will need to furnish a passport). It will kick off in Bangalore and Hyderabad by February, followed by Varanasi, Kolkata, Pune and Vijayawada some months later. Other airports will soon follow suit.