Union Minister rejects cap on Upper Limit of Flight Tickets

New Delhi Jan 6: Union Civil Aviation Minister A Raju has reacted to a report submitted by the parliamentary panel.The report by the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Transport, Tourism, and Culture noted that "airlines are charging more than ten times of the advance booking fare and that deregulatory environment does not mean unlimited freedom of exploitation and urged the government to intervene."

The Committee has also urged the government to fix an upper limit for air tickets and restricting cancellation charges to 50 percent of the base fare.

Reacting to the Report the Minister A Raju has said that "there were only 1.7 percent of cases where fares were higher than normal, and putting a cap on them will result in pushing up fares for 98 percent of the cases."

"We did an analysis and we took up ticketing for an entire year and we realized 1.7 percent of the ticketing was a matter of concern and that was mostly in certain sectors. If we go into floors and caps, we will be pushing up the cost for 98 percent to reduce the cost for less than 2 percent".

Mos Minister Jayant Sinha has said that "Dynamic pricing in our country is a global practice and we have not seen that our airlines are doing anything apart from global practices.If anyone had a complaint they could approach the Directorate General of Civil Aviation and the Competition Commission of India."

The committee has also recommended a cap on cancellation charges as there is a huge exploitation.