“All-in” air fares made mandatory to exhibit for the airlines

Surprised that the cheap ticket fares that you saw in advertisements are actually not so! Well, if you are flying on Canadian airlines then you will not be surprised anymore. The airlines regulators have made it mandatory for the airlines to exhibit the actual prices of tickets on all types of advertisements such as print advertising, billboards and the online advertisements. Earlier, it was quite a common practice, and is still so in many other industries and countries of the world, to have different prices of flight booking on the marketing materials than the actual costs for the sake of attracting the customers. There was the invariable sign of some special character on the advertised prices which indicated that the prices is subject to certain conditions and might include or exclude a number of other charges.

Ottawa has begun this process of change since the marketing materials will now feature the prices which the customers will actually have to pay if they book the supposedly cheap international flights to destinations. The ticket prices exhibited will now include all the taxes, fees and other charges such as airport development fee, etc. so as to enable the customers to know which airlines is offering what all prices upfront without having to run through the process of flight booking to find the true prices.

The move will usher in more transparency in the advertisements and will prevent people being taken to a ride by the airlines or the agencies. It often used to happen that the customers got to realize at the fag-end of their flight booking exercise that there are more charges to be paid for. This left them with two options, either to abandon the online booking at that site or to pay the price for completing the booking, though with a bad taste.

How are interline agreements for air ticket booking are different from the code share agreements?

You must have heard of the code share agreements between the airlines. As a result of these agreements amongst the airlines, you do air ticket booking on one flight but are flown on the other airline, which might surprise you when you take the boarding pass. The code share agreements are quite common among the airlines. These give the benefits of extended market reach and better seat factors to the airlines. However, the interline agreements are relatively rare as compared to code-share ones. Both these types of flights can have flight numbers different from the one of primary airline. But, there are some basic differences between the two.

In case of the code share flights between the source and the destination in a multiple-leg trip, the flight number of each airline with passengers is different. But, in a similar situation, the interline agreement provides the same flight number for all the airlines.

Another major difference between the two is that the code share agreements allow for honoring the frequent flyers programs of airline on which cheap flight tickets are booked with the code-share partner carriers. So, when you are flying on the code share flight, your miles will keep on getting aggregating. Further, you can redeem these points on these carriers as well. But, in case of interline agreements, the rewards programs of booking airline are not honored for those segments of journey whose flights do not have code share agreement with one another.

Yet another difference is with respect to the baggage which needs to be checked-in. In case of code-share agreements, the baggage needs to be checked-in at each segment of flight since these are treated as separate flights. However, in case of the interline agreement, the baggage follows you wherever you go obviating the need for checking-in all the time.

Seat shortages in Indian Aviation Market

There is a handful of domestic airlines and you can count them on fingers: IndiGo, Spicejet, Jet Airways, Go Air and Air India. Together there airlines offer close to 2 lakh seats every day to the passengers. In a country, where the percentage of population travelling by air is not even 1 percent, these number of seats are still very less. So, this fact is sealed that there is indeed a shortage of seats, especially since the Kingfisher Airlines has been grounded. Add to it the persistent problems at the Air India and even these seats become susceptible to availability.

Out of these airlines, it is only Air India and, to some extent, Jet Airways which provide the medium and long haul flights. Since these are the full service carriers, these carriers do not provide the cheap international flights. So, if you have to travel to the destinations beyond Singapore on west and the United Arab Emirates on the East, you do not have many options in terms of carriers flying on these segments. So, besides the shortage of seats in the domestic market, there is also a shortage of seats on the short and long haul flights on the domestic carriers. Well, the foreign carriers do fill that slot but these might not offer as much cheap air tickets as the domestic ones. 

Besides the absolute seat shortages on the domestic and international flights, there are also shortages in the class-wise segments. While the no-frill service providers are filling the ever increasing demand of the cheap air tickets of the economy class travel, there is acute shortage of the business class seats for the people who want to use more comfortable travel options on all routes.

These shortages are the prime reasons for the prices of the air tickets shooting the roof, stoking the fears of cartelization of air fares by the domestic carriers.