Common enquiry number for air queries?

NEW DELHI: People flying Indian carriers may soon enjoy a luxury that train travellers have had for years — a countrywide common enquiry number.

The aviation ministry wants to emulate the 139 service of Indian Railways by having a common phone number that will allow fliers to connect to the Indian carrier they are flying or want information on things like flight timings, fares and baggage rules.

Aviation Minister Praful Patel said the ministry is working on this and wants the facility in place before the October Commonwealth Games. “The aim is to have a common number that can provide all relevant information to fliers about Indian carriers,” he said.

The ministry has called a meeting with Federation of Indian Airlines (FIA), the umbrella organisation of Indian airlines , on Friday. The industry will be asked to implement this move as the technology is available.

The move comes as flying for domestic travel is increasingly getting popular in the country thanks to the mushrooming of low-cost carriers. Post-slowdown, the double-digit domestic traffic growth being recorded in India is among the highest in India. According to airlines, the most common queries are on fares, timings, baggage rules, cancellation charges and reschedule charges.

In fact, the authorities are also looking at the railways to solve another problem that fliers face — overbooking by airlines, leading to forcible grounding of passengers holding confirmed tickets. While airlines overbook as there are last-minute no-shows, the ‘excess’ passengers are adjusted to ensure aircraft occupancy remain good.

“We will discuss with airlines if it’s possible to have the railways’ waiting list system for people buying airline tickets for a flight that’s already sold out. While overbooking is done globally, forcible grounding of fliers is a real problem for which DGCA has issued draft rules to penalise airlines,” said sources.

Airlines have for years been opposing the penalise-for-forcible-grounding rules by demanding changes time and again. They wanted the penalty slabs to be changed from distance flown to flying time. After hanging fire for years, DGCA chief Nasim Zaidi recently issued the draft rule that would be implemented after in-corporating suggestions from the public.

While the common inquiry number is a timebound project that the ministry is very keen on, waiting list for fliers is still in a very nascent stage on which preliminary discussion will be held with airlines in the coming days.