It is not new that the
charges of cartelization of prices have been leveled against the domestic
airlines. Before this year, there have been at least two other occasions in the
last two years when the charges of increasing the prices of the tickets by
airlines acting as a cartel have been leveled. On one occasion even the
Competition Commission of India conducted the probe but found no evidence of
it. This year, the charges and the CCI probe are back in news. At first, it was
Captain Gopinath who brought forth this charge of FIA acting as a cartelization
body under whose garb the airlines fix the entry level prices of the tickets.
Not long after this charge was made, the people who wanted to fly on premium
domestic sectors on Diwali found the prices to be just too high to be
reasonable. Even the airlines which offered the lowest air fare were charging unexpected higher sums.
It was this unexpected
exponential rise in ticket prices, even of the cheap flights offering airlines, which was considered well beyond
the realm of reasonableness and the demand-supply mathematics, has led to the
ordering of a probe by the Minister of Civil Aviation, Mr Ajit Singh. Under the
terms of the probe, the CCI will be required to investigate the reasons in the
high prices during the Diwali time and also to look into the charges of
cartelization which have often been leveled against the airlines.
It is noteworthy that
the airlines release the number of seats and fares for each flight in buckets.
The first bucket generally has the lowest price and its seats get booked, the
next bucket of seats and its prices is rolled out. The last bucket has the
highest prices. Generally, the more is the demand, the more are the prices.
And, this is precisely the logic of high demand and less supply in the last
buckets of seats which is advanced for justifying high prices. But, the lid
seems to have gone too high this time, prompting a probe into the airline
ticket pricing system of the airlines.
No comments:
Post a Comment