Sanjay Singh / New Delhi
India’s civil aviation regulator, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) would do an assessment of rising airfares that have largely remain constant since the Jet Airways troubled surfaced early this year that followed its shutdown on April 17 last month.
Ever since the Jet Airways shutdown, the DGCA has been reviewing daily airfares on most of the high density air routes. The DGCA continues to monitor airfare movements on a daily basis and also engage with airline and has been directing airlines to keep a check on rising airfares. However, this isn’t working well on the ground, and so is the need for engaging with airlines, said a government official.
Though, airfares have been to reasonable levels for the monsoon period that begins from early July till end of September every year, airfares have touched north on metro routes and many non-metro air routes and continue to be on the higher side.
The DGCA had conducted India’s civil aviation regulator, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) in March this year, after Jet Airways air services started impacting with many of its flights getting cancelled. In such situation, last minute fares had gone up much higher then.
Since then, the DGCA has been in touch with airlines to reduce airfares on at least a dozen of air routes on reasonable levels. Airfares at these high density metro routes had gone upto 30 per cent then and continue to be on the higher side.
However, airlines through their representation have apprised the DGCA that they have removed higher buckets from its sale and offering low airfares to air passengers in lower fare buckets.
While many planes of the grounded Jet Airways have been temporarily transferred to IndiGo, SpiceJet and state-run Air India, still there are many Jet Airways’ planes which are lying idle across Indian airports, while a dozen of them have been taken over by the lessors. Jet Airways had over 130 narrow and wide bodied aircraft in its fleet.