Directorate General of Civil Aviation sends notice to airlines over exorbitant fares

NEW DELHI: Acting on a TOI report highlighting how airfares have skyrocketed in the past few days, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation on Wednesday issued notices to all airline CEOs asking them to explain why travellers were being charged excessive fares.

The notice came after a probe by the regulator showed that domestic airfares from Monday (November 15) have been ‘‘ substantially higher’ ’ than past weeks though there has been no hike in operating costs. Airlines have been asked to explain by Friday.

‘‘ Such exorbitant fares can’t be allowed. We are going to take the strictest possible action,’’ aviation minister Praful Patel told TOI.

A source said, ‘‘ DGCA chief Nasim Zaidi asked his officials to take passenger feedback following which the regulator’s fare analysis unit was activated to study fare movement in the past few days. Prima facie, it became evident that airlines are charging exorbitant fares since Monday without any justification for doing so.’’

Taking a very serious view of the findings, Zaidi is learnt to have ordered a complete study of the domestic air travel demand-supply situation in this peak season. Fewer flights leading to increase in fares

Some big airlines are facing crew shortage because of which they are not able to operate flights as per their fleet and others like Kingfisher have a substantial part of their fleet on ground due to engine issues. Combined with sharp capacity drop in Mumbai, thanks to main runway closure there, the authorities fear serious mismatch in demand-supply . Domestic air travel is growing in range of 20-25 % annually.

‘‘ We’ve begun a process of examining if airlines should have a fare band sensitive to demand-supply , so that fares do not exceed highest stipulated level in crunch situations like present one. We are probing if this steep fare hike has been manipulated by fictitious booking so that all low fare seats are shown as sold out and only high fare ones can be bought,’’ said a top official.