All airline charges under DGCA scanner

NEW DELHI: The entire gamut of charges levied by airlines, like for cancellation, rescheduling of tickets and no-show, have come under the scanner of the directorate general of civil aviation (DGCA).

All Indian carriers have submitted their charges for these heads to the regulator on Thursday now joint DG Lalit Gupta is examining whether the same, especially cancellation charges that were raised by several airline recently, are too high and should be rolled back.


DGCA chief M Sathiyavaty had asked Lalit Gupta to examine cancellation charges after getting several complaints from passengers and other groups that some airlines had hiked them exorbitantly. Gupta then asked airlines to submit the entire data to him.

"We have got the same from all airlines on Thursday and will take a call shortly. Cancellation charges have been made time-sensitive, as in they are linked to how close to date of travel do people cancel their tickets," said the official.

Airlines, however, grudge that DGCA is a safety regulator and should not interfere in their pricing policies. "The DGCA has powers to take financial tariff-related issues under sub rule 4 of rule 135 of the Aircraft Act. It is wrong for airlines to say that DGCA is just a safety regulator with no power to decide on financial issues," said the DGCA official.

Airlines now charge anywhere up to Rs 4,000 for cancelling a domestic ticket. Thomas Cook India Ltd's COO (corporate travel) Indiver Rastogi had recently said: "While ticket prices have been slashed in lean season, or to improve airline loads ..., most or all carriers have raised cancellation prices by 50-100%. In the last 20 months, not only have cancellation charges tripled (from Rs 750, charges are now anything between Rs 1,500 and Rs 2,250) but also many compartments have been created by the airline in order to make this a revenue generating model."

"... the cancellation percentage is anything between 15% and 17% of the overall transaction count, one can imagine the impact on the travel budget if a penalty of Rs 2,250 is applied on every ticket bought within three days of travel and cancelled in the same time frame," Rastogi had said