UNION CIVIL AVIATION MINISTER SAYS THAT THERE IS A TARIFF MONITORING UNIT LOOKING INTO FARES OF 60 ROUTES

The Voice of Chandigarh:

Union Minister of Civil Aviation Jyotiraditya M. Scindia informed Lok Sabha that the Ministry of Civil Aviation has a tariff monitoring unit that look at fares of 60 routes on a random basis. Responding to a question on air fares, he said that the tariff monitoring unit monitors fares 30 days, 15 days, 7 days, 3 days, 2 days and 1 day ahead of the scheduled flight.

The Minister said “Civil Aviation is a seasonal sector and fares go up and down variably. October till Mid-January is the high season, after that comes the very low season until April-May when holiday starts and then again you have high season till Mid-June. This is not just limited to India alone; this is a global phenomenon.”

The Minister explained, “If you do booking in advance, there will be no high fares but if you do a booking on the last day then according to the reservation bucket designators which is the RBD system, fares do rise as far as airlines are concerned.”

Scindia said that in the last 3 years, airlines made losses of close to between Rs 55,000 crores to 1,32,000 crores on an annual basis-all airlines together. Covid completely destroyed the financial viability of the airlines. Even in that environment, our airlines have operated on the very sustainable basis.

He added air turbine fuel is close to 40% of the operational cost of the airlines and ATF prices have gone up from 55,000  rupees a kilo litre to 1,55,000 rupees a kilo litre, they have gone up 3 times, and air fares have gone up nowhere in rational to that. Today, ATF is down to just still close to 2 and half times from where it was.