Nagpur: General Secretary of Maharashtra Pradesh Congress Committee Vishal Muttemwar has raised concern over the rampant surge in air fares offered by private airlines, questioning its pricing mechanism. He has also asked for a justification over sudden surge in air fares and alleged that the airlines like Indigo are fleecing flyers with unjustly high fares in the name of dynamic pricing.
Citing a booking instance where he was looking for tickets from Nagpur to Mumbai, Muttemwar said that he was taken aback with the fares listed for an Indigo flight. Rattled over the insignificant surge in the prices, Muttemwar took to X to express his concern.
In his X message, Muttemwar quoted, “Airlines are fleecing the people in the name of surge pricing. A Nagpur-Mumbai flight with a capacity of 180 passengers still has more than 80 unsold seats but @IndiGo6E is selling one seat for more than Rs 20000.”
He also pinned it to the aviation ministry adding, “Why is the civil aviation ministry turning a blind eye to this loot? @JM_Scindia kindly intervene & develop an airfares regulatory mechanism.”
No sooner Muttemwar highlighted the glitch on X, than an Indigo executive named Nisha commented, “We understand your concern, however, our fares are dynamic in nature and may increase or decrease at any given time as per the requirement & availability.”
Taking the issue further, Muttemwar then replied on Indigo’s comment saying, “I understand what dynamic fares are. Its nothing new. Less available seats= more demand & therefore higher prices. But what is new is that despite availability of more than 40% seats, @IndiGo6E is demanding 5 times the normal fare on the sector.”
Nagpur Today View
At a time when holidaying season is at its peak, domestic airlines are unabatedly trying to reap windfall gains, cashing into the travel rush without any regulatory monitoring over its pricing cap. In such events, the travellers have no choice but to give in to the inappropriate air ticket prices being decided at the free will of airlines. Same goes with the private bus fares during festive season when a normal bus fare to travel to cities like Pune skyrockets to five times causing a great deal of inconvenience to the travellers. The aviation ministry must keep a close check on the whimsical dynamic pricing system to bar the airlines from causing a big hole in the travellers’ pocket.
