Soaring fare prices need to be reworked – says DGCA

Airfare has gone up on domestic as well as international routes in the past two weeks despite the warning of the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) regarding a disproportionate spur in the price of tickets.

In the domestic sector, the airfare has increased by 30-40% on the routes where Kingfisher used to operate flights. Major routes like Bangalore to New Delhi and Bangalore to Kolkata have seen a gradual increase in fare. On the international routes, a few carriers have increased the fare following the suspension of some Air India flights in wake of the pilots’ strike.

Maqsood Ahmed of Voyages and Vocations said this is that time of the year when many students from India travel abroad for higher studies. He said it was because of this that the far had doubled. He said the normal fare to the US is in the range of Rs50,000-Rs60,000, but currently a ticket would command anywhere between Rs1.15 lakh and Rs1.2 lakh. On the domestic front, he said, airfare to some destinations had increased by Rs1,000 as the holiday season was coming to an end.

According to many travel agencies in the city, the fare for the Bangalore-New Delhi and Bangalore-Mumbai routes is in the range of Rs8,000-Rs10,000.

Normally, a ticket for these routes comes for Rs5,000-Rs7,000. A frequent flyer to Kolkata said the fare for Delhi and Mumbai has always been high, but now the fare for Kolkata too had increased by Rs2,000-Rs3,000.

The DGCA had asked the domestic airlines to rework their prices to control the exorbitant rise in airfare.

http://www.dnaindia.com/bangalore/report_you-too-feeling-low-over-high-airfare_1707275